Publication details
Digital social reading and web books: from instant to undistracted reading
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| Citation | |
| Description | New technologies and digital services influence the current forms of reading, and libraries respond to these possibilities by offering new services based mainly on ebooks. The constraints resulting from the recent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic have reinforced this trend. This work introduces the development process of new library services based on open web books experimentally developed at Masaryk University and the Municipal Library of Prague. Our initial research focused on people's behavior when reading a book in a browser, on elements of user interface interactions, but also on the overall context of reading on different types of devices, especially mobile. Through a Research through Design approach, qualitative inquiry and prototyping, we have identified interesting patterns in reading behavior and library users' needs, to which we have responded by designing a new service. We converted the concept of the new service into interactive prototypes in the Figma tool, which we further tested and iterated. Testing helped to uncover additional elements of user behavior when reading book excerpts. In particular, we focused on the emotions associated with reading fiction in the context of interrupted vs. uninterrupted reading. The research contributes to supporting reading in the digital world and brings new information about reading behavior in the age of instant digital services. |
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