Hacker News Reader

Auto-play wouldn't engage the viewer. Tapping does. A call to action ("keep tapping!") isn't so exciting if you take away the action ;)

We went user controlled because we wanted people to be able to guide their own experience. We watched a bunch of people use the app and noticed people went a very different speeds.

It turned out that we show so little at a time that people went through the deck in two ways: very slowly or very quickly. We couldn't have allowed both to do that with an auto-play or video function.

When I went through it I tapped as fast as if I'm playing a video game, although not because I'm a fast reader, more because there are so few words on the screen. I don't think there's a good way to solve this, or that you need to.

Right. One way or the highway. A relatively refreshing feeling. I think the ability to tap anywhere on the screen helps too, there's no way to eff up.