The Salem News- Beverly, MA 12+

The original Salem News app was simple and without flourish. Plain at best, but surprisingly useable and easy to read. This update is SO bad: impossible to navigate articles, overwhelming on the eyes, supremely ugly.

I mean, a lot of the errors could have been avoided with just common sense: why would you include deks if you can't read them? Why would you have two "hamburger" buttons on the top row? Why organize the apps in sections if they're not actually organized in any coherent way? Why are the edge gestures so bizarrely inconsistent and unpredictable? Why have a back button pointing left on the RIGHT side of the screen?

Seriously, this app takes the cake for one of the worst UI/UX's I've ever come across. My guess is Salem News outsourced the original app, but brought a dev team in-house to save money for this redesign. Clearly they hired an engineer rather than a designer, and I'd question the engineer's skills. I have no idea how the Salem News could release this...barely good enough to justify a beta release.

I used to read the paper every morning, but, for at least a month now, this app doesn't even show me a single article. Nevermind reading an article, I can't even see the headlines. The app opens and on screen it says "checking for new articles". It then loads a blank page with ads on the top and bottom, which stays up for a few seconds, and then the cycle repeats itself. I used to deliver this paper for several years and have been reading it for about 25 now. Very disappointing.

Not sure why the app was even updated. I thought it was perfect before. The new design seems to be a few steps backward. Interface is a lot less aesthetically pleasing, as well as more difficult to read. Also don't like that my article views are now limited to just 5?? Not sure if that's in a 24hr period or longer, will find out tomorrow I suppose. I really wish we could reverse the update, I much rather liked the previous version. This one is disappointing.