BINDING THE ELECTRONIC BOOK: Design Features for Bibliophiles

Visible Language, 2007 by Ruecker, Stan, Uszkalo, Kirsten C

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a design for the electronic book based on discussions with frequent book readers. We adopted a conceptual framework for this project consisting of a spectrum of possible designs, with the conventional bound book at one difference pole, and the laptop computer at the other; the design activity then consisted of appropriately locating the new electronic book somewhere on this spectrum. Our data collection consisted of a web-based survey and two focus groups, all of which used a set of questions based on five human factors, to collect information on the opinions and practices common to graduate students in English and other frequent readers. Our purpose was to identify features considered crucial by frequent book readers. We addressed the goal of incorporating these features by developing an electronic book design called the Bi Sheng, which attempts to accommodate the significant features of conventional books while adding functionality derived from the electronic form of the text.

INTRODUCTION

The electronic book and electronic book reader have not yet been widely adopted by the majority of frequent book readers. This paper addresses the question of what an electronic book might look like that would appeal to this demographic. We ran a study with frequent book readers, in an attempt to gauge their reaction to existing e-books and e-readers, in order to identify what elements they consider crucial in the reading experience. We found that frequent readers would reasonably wish to retain the familiarity and benefits of regular book-reading that they have enjoyed, but would be interested in a technology that added still more benefits. In response, we propose a new design for the electronic book, the Bi Sheng,' which will combine the pleasure of book-reading with the flexibility of the e-book and e-book reader.

Although he aptly concluded, in 1992, that manipulating electronic text was still more difficult than manipulating paper, Andrew Dillon also proposed that there might be better ways to organize information. However, by the time the second edition of Designing Usable Electronic Text (2004) appeared, Dillon's assessment on paper preference and usability had not really changed. He claimed that research still "suggests that paper is by far the preferred medium for reading" and that transferring texts to the "electronic medium is insufficient and often detrimental to use" (p. 4). The book is not a limiting form, he suggested; one could argue for "paper being the liberator as at least the reader always has access to the full text" (p. 117). Proposing a way to shape the electronic text for greater Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Dillon suggests the TIME framework (task, information, text and ergonomie variables) in an attempt to work with readers' tendency to impress structure on information (p. 126). For the purpose of our study, we look to a skill which is learned early and is easily transferable - text manipulation (p. 139). Manipulating paper and pages is a crucial and familiar aspect of interaction with a text; any attempt to create an electronic book for the frequent reader must, in some form, reproduce this (p. 179). Because electronic texts, especially e-books and e-book readers, have yet to provide the visual and tactile affordances provided by paper texts (e.g., the two dimensions of the electronic book give no indication of text size, content quality, age or usage (p. 125), an electronic book which provides those elements would serve as a mid-point between the useful familiarity of the paper text and the potential of the electronic. The Bi Sheng would provide what Dillon (2003) calls for: an e-book reader with a "richer sense of user experience, one that allows for aesthetics as much as efficiency" (p. 68).

AVERSION HISTORY

In the year 2000, D.T. Max looked back at the already cooled e-book industry, recollecting in "1994, when I first reported on the proposed electronic-book industry, I drank a lot of cappuccino with pony-tailed men who quoted Marshall McLuhan. That was a more interesting time in e-book history" (p. 20). Six years after Max's melancholic reminiscences, we still do not have a practical, working and, more importantly, commercially successful electronic book. E-book readers as unique physical devices have existed in the popular imagination for at least fifty years, in part fueled by widespread interest in burgeoning technologies, and in part through the influence of various science-fiction treatments. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, for example, marks a significant point in the fictional life of the electronic book, featuring as it does a book that contains relevant information on every topic of interest in the known universe - a kind of futuristic implementation of the Renaissance wish for a compendium of all knowledge.

There have also been periodic attempts at producing commercially viable e-book readers. Early attempts date at least to the late 1960s, with Alan Kay's Dynabook. Later entries include the Sony Bookman of the early 1990s, and the Rocket eBook, the SoftBook and the EveryBook in the late 1990s. These e-book readers were, however, more like computers than books. Although these devices found markets among readers of technical documentation and technophiles, they have all but disappeared from the marketplace. In 2004, Sony introduced the Sony Libri� (EBR-100EP), its first electronic reader, which featured E Ink's electric paper as a reading surface; however, the Libri�'s inability to store files for more than 60 days (based on copyright restrictions which Sony calls Open MG) and exclusive use of BroadBand e-Book, Sony's own proprietary format, made it impossible to import any other form of documents or store any file indefinitely (Lewis, 2004). Also released in 2004, Panasonic's SigmaBook2 was revolutionary, with its two screens and (although it also had restricted titles) ability to download texts from a secondary source: 10 Days Book. At twice the weight and size of the Sony Libri�, Phred Dvorak (2004) argued that the SigmaBook was simply not user-friendly: it had no internal memory, required different software to read text from different sources and suffered from sluggish screens with poor contrast. Sony's Portable Reader System (Sony Reader PRS-500) is one of the latest efforts to create a viable e-book. David Pogue (2006) praises the advances made with the Sony Reader, especially noting how its E Ink screen provides a pleasant and natural reading experience. Its problems lie in the screen's refresh cycle, page size, counter-intuitive controls, and lack of search function. Pogue forecasts that the Sony Reader will find a niche market, but concludes that the masses may still continue to prefer the freedom and familiarity of "p-books."