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Academic e-reading: themes from user experience studies
The document summarizes key themes from a user experience study on academic e-reading. It found that convenience is important to students, as they prefer familiar systems. However, fragmentation of content across multiple tools and devices hurts the experience. Collaboration and social features are important to support the social aspects of learning. Finally, e-books need to better take advantage of the digital medium, such as improved annotation tools, zooming of images, and integration with other tools and platforms to reduce fragmentation. The document discusses how e-books could address these themes to better meet student and researcher needs.
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Academic e-reading: themes from user experience studies
- 1. Academic E-Reading Themes fromUser Experience Studies Nicole Hennig, Head MIT Libraries User Experience Group Nov. 8, 2011
- 2. Today’s talk 1. Userneeds study results 2. Mobile academic ereading - the current state 3. Mobile academic ereading - improving it
- 3. User Needs Research DigitalScholarship Study 17 students kept diaries of their academic lives for a week - in-depth interviews how are new technologies & formats changing how students work?
- 4. Themes Convenience wins Fragmentation hurts People count Place matters
- 5. Convenience wins Familiarity Time investedin familiar systems Post-paper society - no more flipping through current journals
- 6. Convenience wins Difficult? changetopic Interlibrary borrowing? Just difficult enough to skip.
- 7. Convenience wins The convenienceof pen & paper.
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- 9. Fragmentation hurts Multiple storagesolutions
- 10. Fragmentation hurts Even “thecloud” is fragmented.
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- 13. People count Collaboration Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmakice/3462454985/
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- 18. Place matters 24-hours, workfrom everywhere http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcolwell/502787405/
- 19. Themes Convenience wins Fragmentation hurts People count Place matters
- 20. “How might we?...” A.Convenience wins 1. How might we make our services as convenient as possible? B. Fragmentation hurts 1. How might we reduce fragmentation in our resources and tools that we provide? 2. How might we make our tools interoperate with the tools that people use? (Dropbox, Instapaper, Google Docs, Evernote, Refworks, Zotero) C. People count 1. How might we enable people to connect to the experts they need?
- 22. Academic ebooks -current situation
- 23. We subscribe to manyebook packages, but most are not easy to read on mobile devices.
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- 25. What we tellour users
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- 27. What we lookfor
- 28. Students use ofebooks not growing Chronicle of Higher Education
- 29. MIT Libraries Fall2011 survey 77% have a smartphone or e-reader. MIT Libraries Fall 2011 Survey. 6,500 responses, 44% response rate
- 30. MIT students wantto read & take notes while mobile Results not completely analyzed yet, but majority “not currently doing this, but would like to” for all choices. MIT Libraries Fall 2011 Survey. 6,500 responses, 44% response rate
- 31. Expectations from non-academice-reading - read anytime/anywhere - small, lightweight, carry many books with you - easy to get new books immediately - ability to sync between mobile devices & computers - zooming in to details of illustrations (iPad & other tablets) - even small screens can work for reading PDFs, thanks to apps like GoodReader
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- 35. “Librarians must carveout new roles as advocates of more usable digital collections” Char Booth, Univ. of California, Berkeley
- 37. What academic ebookscould be 1. Solve user problems Convenience wins 2. An ecosystem Fragmentation hurts 3. Social context People count 4. Take advantage of the medium Medium matters
- 38. It’s more thanreading • pondering • thinking • taking notes • bookmarking • copying • quoting • defining words • underlining • highlighting • comparing with other text • skipping around http://www.flickr.com/photos/bludgeoner86/2298513747/ • skimming • looking at photos • examining charts/graphs • citing • discussing
- 39. Convenience wins Easy annotation Improvedways to annotate digital documents that allow for either typing or handwriting in a way that works easily and intuitively. GoodReader iAnnotate PDF
- 40. 1 Convenience wins Integration with citation tools Allow for ease of saving and formatting citations in formats required.
- 41. Convenience wins Solve userproblems Content is no longer just a product. It’s part of a value chain that solves readers’ problems. Readers expect publishers to point them to the outcomes or answers they want, where and when they want them. - Context, Not Container by Brian O’Leary
- 42. Fragmentation hurts Download once,read anywhere Allows one to be “device-agnostic”... change or upgrade device, keep your content.
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- 44. Fragmentation hurts Integration withcloud tools Allows for easy organizing, saving, and moving content between devices and systems.
- 45. People count Social features,discussion Allow for sharing of quotes and text snippets via email, Twitter, Google+, or other social media.
- 46. People count Social features,discussion
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- 49. Medium matters Text -also known as “formless” content http://www.flickr.com/photos/aufheben/494023168/
- 50. Medium matters Text +graphics, maps, diagrams - also known as “definite content” http://www.flickr.com/photos/25541021@N00/4339699941/
- 51. Medium matters Formless vs.Definite Content “.....definite content..... It may be reflowable, but depending on how it is reflowed, inherent meaning and quality of the text may shift.” — Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod
- 52. Medium matters Better waysto view illustrations Allow for zooming in and out, with multi-touch gestures for very large, detailed images, maps, or diagrams. http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/2230280043/
- 53. Medium matters Learn fromdesign of comic apps auto-zoom to each panel What if zoom features were applied to scholarly illustrations?
- 54. Medium matters The Elements,iPad app 3D images, rotation. Takes advantage of multi-touch & swipe.
- 55. Medium matters Page turningmetaphor “Take something as fundamental as pages, for example. The metaphor of flipping pages already feels boring and forced on the iPhone and on the iPad. The flow of content no longer has to be chunked into “page”-sized bites.” - Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod
- 56. Medium matters “One simplisticreimagining of book layout would be to place chapters on the horizontal plane, with content on a fluid vertical plane.” - Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod
- 57. Medium matters Limitless spacebeyond the edges “In printed books, the two-page spread was our canvas. It’s easy to think similarly about the iPad. Let’s not. The canvas of the iPad must be considered in a way that acknowledges the physical boundaries of the device, while also embracing the effective limitlessness of space just beyond those edges. We’re going to see new forms of storytelling emerge from this canvas.” - Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod
- 58. Medium matters “The waywe think about book, magazine, and newspaper publishing is unduly governed by the physical containers we have used for centuries to transmit information.” - Context, Not Container by Brian O’Leary
- 59. Medium matters DIY: createyour own, mix/match “Many current audiences (and all future ones) live in an open and accessible environment. They expect to be able to look under the hood, mix and match chunks of content, and create, seamlessly, something of their own. Failure to meet those needs will result in obscurity, at best.” - Context, Not Container by Brian O’Leary
- 60. Medium matters Librarians &scholarly publishers - we want to offer the best - we want to innovate - we want to provide useful tools for scholarship and learning - we need more thoughtful analysis around DRM issues
- 61. Medium matters DRM: Makinginformed decisions Meanwhile, a growing number of mostly independent publishers are doing the unthinkable: releasing ebooks without any form of copy restriction. Are these publishers completely oblivious to the obvious problem of digital piracy? Or are they taking a calculated risk that will ultimately benefit their business? - Analyzing the business case for DRM by Kirk Biglione http://book.pressbooks.com/chapter/analyzing-business-case-for-drm
- 62. A social book Context,Not Container by Brian O’Leary Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod Analyzing the business case for DRM by Kirk Biglione
- 63. What academic ebookscould be 1. Solve user problems Convenience wins 2. An ecosystem Fragmentation hurts 3. Social context People count 4. Take advantage of the medium Medium matters
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