Key Features:
Map as navigational device: The Book as Dérive
- There was already a map, a table that held contents
- Current reading flow has too much back and forth, not as fun
- Users are used to map applications, used to interacting with that UI, and exploring.
- Digital cartography is a well established field.
- Maps as a navigational device, driving journeys + the map is not the territory
- Also, it marks where you have been; Being lost, finding
Conversations through marginalia: Voyeuristic Reading
- Annotations are literally in the title of the book
- Ipad size is both infinite and limited, using margins instead of footnotes creates less friction, becomes easier to read. It also emphasizes relationship between content.
- Analogous to the experience of being an author editing your friend’s manuscript.
- Probably more similar to the experience of the authors before the books were published
- Have you ever received a used book, filled it with annotations? Isn’t it fun to read the annotations? It’s almost like eavesdropping
Gamification & Achievements
- Creates an additional layer of incentive for reading the book.
- Digital books do not replicate the physicality of intimacy; the feeling of going through a bunch of pages of a book, breaking the spine, and finishing it.
- This iteration tries to replicate this fact by getting visually darker the more you explore it; much like the creases and marks of a well-worn paperback; the more you explore, the more it reveals to you, the more possibilities you have.
- Also, a good way to stash some extra supplemental material in it, like academic articles, related artworks, and rewards.
Process
Persona
Prototyping & Testing
