For two years, and via two dozen experiments, including during the US presidential election, The Mobile Innovation Lab used The Guardian’s newsroom to study ways to improve news delivery on smartphones.

This, as readers of TheMarioBlog know, is a topic dear to me. While I am a strong advocate of linear storytelling for mobile, there is little research conducted so far to guide us in the process.

That is why I think this Mobile Innovation Lab project, funded by a a $2.6 million grant from the Knight Foundation, offers new insights that will help editors in newsrooms everywhere.

Of special interest in this project:

Push notifications and the role they play in the development of breaking news stories.
The Smarticle, a story format designed for mobile that aims to meet readers where they are in their knowledge of a developing story by only presenting them with the elements that are most useful to them. Read more about the Smarticle.

In essence, this is what The Smarticle is, and it is linked to the way a story flows, especially for breaking news:

A story is broken down into its core elements, which are displayed as a series of blocks.
When a reader first visits the page, the blocks contain only the most fundamental story details up to that point.
As the reader returns, an algorithm determines what should appear for each user. For these first three experiments, the algorithm took into account what someone had read on their last visit, as well as the importance of each new story development.
Users who read the story on a Chrome browser have the option to subscribe to notifications, which are sent when there is a critical mass of updates or a major development in the story.