Findings / UX-051
Re-rendering the whole view on every save lost the reader's place
FixedMediumFailureNewsroom Design Lab
What we saw
Every store write (a highlight, a note, a status) re-rendered the whole reading view and jumped the scroll position.
Why it matters
A reader who highlights a sentence is thrown somewhere else in an 8,000-word article.
The fix
Repaint only the parts that changed. Done in the article vault before publishing.
The record
| Status | Fixed |
| Severity | Medium |
| Kind | Failure: works against the reader |
| Product | Newsroom Design Lab, prototype |
| Where | newsroom-proto-article |
| Problems | Unexpected movement |
| Visibility | Obvious: every reader sees it, every time they reach that point |
| Recommendation | Keep the UI still: nothing moves, appears or takes focus unless the reader asked for it; chrome that hides stays hidden until a deliberate gesture |
| Area | Article page |
| Breaks | Nothing moves that the reader did not move |
| Observed | 2026-10-11, v0.1.0 |
| Last checked | 2026-10-11, v0.1.1 |
| Source | Design lab: what building it measured |
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