How to explain best that there is more to a headline? (Icon, Text, etc)

Question

We want to show "news headlines" within a google map (the news where it happend).

The news will show up in speech bubbles. Only the headline will be shown first. If a user want to read more, he has to open the news somehow.

I had some ideas. But I am not too happy with it.

After a click on the icon it will look somewhat like that:

Are my ideas useful?

And more importantly... Do you have a better idea? :)

PS: I found this Icon for "More", like more results and I like Roger Atrill's idea a quite good...

Answer 1

I am in favor of just showing the headline and couple of lines of teaser content

The image above is from the padmapper app which does this beautifully by just showing enough content to interest the user.

In your case,If the user likes the content he can then click on the read more link or icon which then takes him to the main page of the content or a formatted version of the content. The reason behind this is that you are enticing the user by just providing him with enough content to make a decision while also not crowding your screen or completely diverting him away from the main apps screen.

One of my favorite news apps does this really well as it allows the user to make a decision based upon:

1. First the headline
2. The content
3. The option to see the whole content

Answer 2

You could add a ,,read more" link:

"Read more"-links are used very often and users will understand what they mean. In contrast, with icons there is the risk that users do not understand the meaning.

However, if you look at usability recommendations or blogs of usability experts, you will find that even these "read more" and "click here" links are considered as bad, as they are not meaningful enough. They prefer clickable titles. To my mind, it depends. I have found that especially occasional internet users do not notice that they get more information by simply clicking at the text, because they even do not try to hover it.

Answer 3

Can you reasonably present the headline as a hyperlink (e.g. in blue with an underline)?

In general the text that implies that some text is missing is the ellipsis (…). You can use it in a button as shown in the example in your link, or simply following the text that is clipped.

Answer 4

I want to split this area of question in three parts -

1. The amount of news that pours into a region or location
2. Indicating with appropriate icon that the map is not camouflaged in whole or parts by the icon and the pop-over on it.
3. Keeping new items poured inside as the user returns back

When the news is generated in a region, I believe you might have additive news coming in at different time, simple multiple news in a region. So looking at your options it will be very cumbersome to pick the news straight out without zooming inside further.

I would look it a way where - you got to marry an icon (appropriate one for news) and indicate by numbers next to the icon. So it would keep cumulatively adding the news count. On click of the news it should open in a modal window, which incidentally can group multiple news. With a top bar as a carousel the news detail with header opens underneath it. This news section will have the scroll without any "Read More" link.

So a larger icon takes precedent mapping to the area. So I click it, the map zooms automatically to sub-regions, whereas it splits the news count further down.

Now an appropriate icon could be a News Roll, speech bubbles or even simple numbers inside a box.

A mechanism like a separate indicator as part of the icon to show that there are new news item that has come in, while the user returns back. This is an extensive business case for your existing case, as we can make user intuitively understand that the new item is lying inside this region, so go ahead and click it.

Option 2:

If you do want a headline also shown up, I would advice to have a separate column next to map, such as on mouse hover the news headliners show up in the box. By this way you do not hide or camouflage the map but can freely move to find news according to the count shown in. This will also have a larger icon, and will break apart as further zooming down automatically.