UX ObjectivesThe print UX (user experience) was at the heart of the editorial strategy of the magazine. The magazine was developed to be an aspirational product, showing the best of what the community had to offer — but this was never at the expense of being a product users would enjoy and hopefully keep at their homes or sitting on coffee tables at businesses.In order to do this, we followed Associated Press style guidelines but paid attention to when it was important to deviate. The magazine was often written in a narrative form as opposed an inverted pyramid, as most news stories are typically written. Newspapers and online journalism are typically disposable content, not meant to be revisited. Meanwhile, magazines are products which have a typical shelf-life of one month. This means magazine content must have long-term engagement and a reason for users (readers) to revisit the product and engage over the span of a month. Story Design

Inverted pyramid story design — what is typically used in newspaper and online journalism places the most relevant and timely information at the beginning of an article and then progressively works toward less and less important details (which are still relevant to the article). This is effective with breaking information.

Narratively-based story design — which was primarily used in New Braunfels Monthly — instead focuses on a stream of information that places readers in the shoes of the writer and can meander from idea to idea before concluding with either a revelation or exposed question. This allows the writer to develop a longer story that can be more engaging than typical journalism that is limited by time and available space (in print publications).

As mentioned, New Braunfels Monthly needed to have a shelf-life of one month. In order to achieve that, the stories relied on long-form storytelling which would require multiple use instances by the targeted customer. The idea being it would take a customer one month to get through all the content in each issue. In theory, they would read one story, put the magazine down and then revisit hours, days or weeks later to continue reading.This was also the reasoning behind including a revolving calendar of events that would encourage users to revisit the publication.

Language

Language in the magazine was always conversational — more like a friendly chat than a scientific journal. Stories never assumed readers had institutional knowledge of the area and would explain concepts — which often had German language-based roots — in approachable terms that never criticized a reader for not being familiar.

But in doing this, a balance had to be struck that would engage with both new and multi-generational residents. The approach to this task was to write as described, but explore topics those longtime residents would be familiar with but lack a deep understanding.

• All German and Spanish words would be defined in English.

• All stories were written from the approach of a tourist — someone passing through town for the first time.

• Business addresses were not initially included in stories to avoid the appearance of paid advertising and the idea being younger readers would find locations using products like Google Maps. This was later changed due to user feedback.

All of this is to say the magazine stories were a departure from traditional news journalism, which is what most of the writers were trained in. This required strong guidance and editing to adhere to the magazine’s principal goals.