Craft, quality, longevity, care, sustainable, informative. These words are associated with the experience of well designed books. As a majority of this blog has explored the ideas of design are essential to a experience. Experience is a word that has a wide range of use. It can be broad and specific shallow or deep and short and long. Experience design then has to deal with these binaries at every turn. The video above is an interview with @craigmod at http://www.craigmod.com an great blog and resource for opening the discussion when it comes to the publishing community. I agree with his premise that print material will never go away! and that for existing publishers to compete with digital media they need to reassess the design quality of books. Increasing the craft, quality, and experience which could increase the cost but would establish a different value for the user / readers.
Human beings are very astute creatures and the nuance of quality is probably our greatest skill. The perception of quality is a realm that advertising and design and media has been manipulating for 1000′s of years. Perception of quality is an outcome of communication and commerce. I don’t believe I need to talk about the value of design and quality in an economic system I believe Adam Smith layed it out just fine in wealth of nations. How ever the experience of quality is something that technology has a great impact on. Systems of manufacturing, production and distribution also impact the perception value of an object in society. When Gutenberg was first printing books there the value of such an object was so rare that is had great value this revolution allowed at wave of printing innovation that has made many millionaires and billionaires over through out time. However the advances in manufacturing and production has also degraded the perception of value of print material. Walk through any common book store and the weight of the complicated system that produces books is transparent. The whole system falls away and all that is left is a price tag. It is a huge problem for the perceived value of a book and its experience. This concept occurs in many other place in contemporary society including out modern grocery stores. Business practices of efficiency take the system and infrastructure as unimportant to the experience of an object for sale. However the entire system is the story the context for a book in this case to live in the world. The complication of these system are looked at as too complicated for the simplicity of marketing and advertising of objects. The idea that we only make decisions in the moment. However we know this not to be true! Objects especially well made books become way more interesting when their quality and production are evident on the surface. The most valuable book are those from the gutenberg press. There story and longeivity add to this quality but so does the system that kept their existence going ie libraries. Therefore the quality of a book is the sum of its entire experience. When a book shows up on a shelf is not the beginning of the story is is somewhere in the middle. The story needs to become more evident just as craig mod discusses. Marshall McLuhan once said “we become what we behold …. we shape our tools, and therefore after our tools shape us” for me I hope that that tool is a beautifully design well crafted well written book!
A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, wrote an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.
Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’
The materiality of paper takes on a extended meaning due to its experience. The knowledge that is contained with in a book is not singularly wrapped up in the words on the page. From psychology class in college at Colorado State University, I remember my teacher telling us that our brains formulate knowledge and recall through repeating similar experiences under which that knowledge was learned. For example if you are juiced up on coffee while you study for a test you should be juiced up on coffee during the test because the brain associates the experience of the learning along with the recall of that information. Similarly you might be able to recall a story in a book more vividly when the same circumstances are repeated. The engagement of content influences our learning and subsequent recall. Therefore the reading of a book is learned through the experience of the pages. Knowledge that is engaged in the physicality of pages is then linked with that experience. Pages then become essential to formulation of knowledge within a book.
Media critic William Powers wrote a defense of physical bound literature in his essay, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ Mr. Paper – he not dead, Powers wrote: “There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve, or store information.’’
Paper will never die, Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered – not yet.’’
The digital medium has been attempting to replace the piece of paper and it has been around the corner in terms of technology since technology began. Now what if the digital medium and the physical medium where equal? When paper and computer work together seamlessly then paper takes on an added functionality with the computer.
The digital textbook?
With students doing so much of their reading assignments through the screen instead of on book or paper formats, it’s important for educators to determine how the shift is altering their habits and learning. The research is just beginning, but it’s getting deeper, an article in the Journal of Research in Reading (2008, pp. 404-419) by Anne Mangen, “Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion.” Mangen notes the growing sub-field of screen reading studies, but finds that the “intangibility and volatility of the digital text” remain under-examined. She focuses first, then, on the material nature of digital and non-digital reading experiences. “Unlike print texts,” she writes, “digital texts are ontologically intangible and detached from the physical and mechanical dimension of their material support, namely, their computer or e-book (or other devices, such as the PDA, the iPod or the mobile phone” (405).
This is important, she argues, because “materiality matters.” The reading experience includes manual activities and haptic perceptions (what the skin and muscles and joints register), and so as activities and perceptions of that kind are changed from one kind of reading experience to another because of the object, the reading experience, too, will change.
So if materiality matters in the delivery of content especially reading material, then it would be arguable that to remove the materiality of paper from the reading experience would fundamentally alter that exchange. Screen engagement has become a reality in modern times but the advantages of the screen have forced its usability right next to the book forcing them to go head to head. I have chosen to regard these experience as different and explore a way to bridge the difference between experiences. As use of screen based devices increases, the need for physical interaction with objects like books will become essential in the recombination of content delivery. I believe users should not have to exchange one experience for the other in order to engage in the content the way they would like. Many things in this world have multiple experiences and with the linking physical and digital is opens up a strategy and platform for making printed content and digital content work together.
John Locke said, “reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” Thinking can be greatly enhanced through digital means of networking so making paper and computer work together will greatly enhance the opportunity to make reading our again.
It has been 5 years now, since the fire that took everything from me and I wonder if a day will pass in which I don’t long for the past. Some days are better than others but days like today where the rain spits on my concrete block of a home leave me wanting my old life back. But “those days are gone” like the last thing the FBI officer said to me after I was informed I am being put into Protective Housing. (HA! They really meant Isolated Housing) FBI Special Investigator Milo Kilowski made it very clear to me that the fire was a decisive message and that the firebomb that destroyed my former life had been linked to 3000 others all at the same time. Who would do such a thing? Its been 5 years and they still haven’t figured it out, and frankly I gave up trying to understand too. So I have been sequestered in this freedom jail ever since because I happened to be the only one of the 3000 who wasn’t burned to a crisp. Lucky? On days like today I think not.
My wall talks to me about my schedule for the day and the smell of the automated coffee dispenser singes my nose hairs but the rain has clouded my ambitions even how meager they might have been. When I was smuggled here five years ago the over polished, glossy brochure Officer Kilowski handed me about this place made it sound impressive.
“A place where technology and living are linked.”
Milo was a very candid stocky man who rarely minced his words. When I gave him a puzzled look upon the examination of the brochure he said
“What did you expect us to put you in a Mansion?”
which was followed up with,
“You will be safe here, I give you my word.”
Protective Housing works on the premise of eminent danger. You accept blindly because there is the illusion that at any moment you could be killed and a person in that circumstance rarely denies the help being offered. But 5 years in I don’t feel so scared and I mostly just agonize over the ridiculous shit box that government has provided. I really just want my stuff back my wife, my dog, my books, my records, my paintings, my drawings, my paintbrushes, my tools, my house. I don’t even know if any thing survived the fire. Upon asking Kilowski just says,
“All items have been logged as evidence and evidence will be
returned to the rightful owner upon completion of the
investigation.”
He sounds like such a robot. I’m surprised he doesn’t list the rule ID number along with his canned answer. At first I pressed for answers but now I just go day to day attempting to forget my memories.
They say memories fade with time, but some memories you never want to forget. My wife had such beautiful handwriting the kind that has those cute little curly cues at the end of some words and she made tiny little circles over her i’s and j’s. It was such a reflection of her patience and style. She use to leave me such beautiful hand written notes for groceries or tasks around the house. On valentines day she would write on the mirror with red lipstick. I loved reading her books because I could get into her head from the margin. The Incident took all that from me except for the last book we read together. As a technology blogger, in my former life, I was always being inundated with waves of technology most of it crap but I usually only was given one to review. However this young rep at Hybrid Plus Pens gave me two pens and said,
“Try it with your wife. it will save all your notes to the cloud for
sharing just get a book that has the hybrid logo”
The drizzle is like salt on a paper cut today. I request the wall to bring up the Hybrid Plus Portal, stats automatically flash about my frequency to the site and ads are directed to my temperament flash in the corners. Lately mostly antidepressants show up and have been for the past 5 years when I think about it. The wall now glows with the last remnants of my wife’s writing. Her questions and sarcasm about my insistence she use the pen. She even hassled me in her notes poking fun at my techy job and rubbing in that this book was her choice. I sit at the edge of my bed and move through the pages like I have hundreds of time before. I close my eyes and flop back on the bed hoping that is this might all be a horrible twisted dream. The door speaks up and announces to my concrete block,
“FBI Special Investigator – is approaching.”
I open my eyes right as he knocks on the door.
I open the door and Kilowski is standing holding a small tattered cardboard box with a tag that says evidence in bright yellow and black tape.
“Evidence? “ I say,
“Does this mean the investigation is over?”
Kilowski gets a slight smile out of the corner of his over stoic face and hands me the box. He turns around and upon exit says,
“Go back to your old life and find someone who you can use that
pen with!”
I just stand in the doorway overlooking the other concrete blocks and get rained on as the premise of my “old life” rings in my ears.
Knowledge is embodied in people gathered in communities and networks. The road to knowledge is via people, conversations, connections and relationships. Knowledge surfaces through dialog, all knowledge is socially mediated and access to knowledge is by connecting to people that know or know who to contact.
Denham Grey
Print material including books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and comics have all come under the threat of being relegated to the trash due to networked screen technologies. Technologies such as the Kindle, Nook, future tablet PC’s and smart phones have greatly diminished the market share of print material. As technologies move forward and interaction with print material becomes lessened, the question should be how did this happen? it should be why has print material not adapted and become a link between ink and screen?
Reading is a uniquely a singular interaction, but knowledge and comprehension are communal. Hybrid Plus will be a design platform and series of prototypes that incorporate the communal aspects of reflection, knowledge, and comprehension into the experience of the individual act of reading. The prototypes will engage the social interaction and ecology of book clubs, study clubs, and educational groups. Hybrid Plus will give interaction to the physical pages of books and build shared spaces within the margins for reflection, passive communication, and collective comprehension. When the margins of books and literature are shared what does the margin become? a communication space? A passive location to challenge a social exchange? A reflection space for many? A space to engage the content deeper with in a group? The prototypes will engage both built and speculative outcomes. Physicality is an essential experience to books and literature and the prototyping of conductive inks and networked pages builds upon this affordance .
The project rather then replacing the physical book with intangible data, incorporates the technological advances of networked pages, shared margin spaces, and physical interaction into the experience of the printed artifact as a way to explore the space between printed material and the screen.
The video prototype concept utilizes the conductive inks I have been experimenting with to generate interactive switches that are designed with in the margins of the narrative. The conductive switches illicit the context of the footnote for the narrative. The switch both lights up an embedded LED in the page and also triggers a screen / projection / smart phone message that could be accessed simultaneously through out the narrative. The content is a short story from David Foster Wallace’s Interviews with Hideous Men : Suicide as a Sort of Present. David Foster Wallace is an author the has utilized the footnote context annotation through out his body of work especially Infinite Jest
Engaging users with an interaction is a difficult process. I am attempting to engage users in natural mapped interactions through iconography the associats a particular action of touch. Natural mapping is a term for the proper and natural arrangements for the relations between controls and their movements to the outcome from such action into the world. Like that of a door knob or a book.The real function of natural mappings is to reduce the need for any information from a user’s memory to perform a task. This term is widely used in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interactive design discussed in Donald Norman’s book : The design of Everyday Things.
Screen printing has been an Art Form and Industry process for many years. Screen printing is extremely useful for artifacts of print nature from posters to t-shirts to business cards. Screen printing as an art form has been used from as far back as Chinese textiles, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD).
The process of using a screen to pull ink puts the maker in control of the printed output rather then a machine in form of a digital printer. The physical nature of applying ink has given arts and designers inspiration and a style that can exist outside newly conventional means of digital printing or offset lithography.
The physical affordance of screen printing allows the maker to thinking differently about the process of production. Screen printing has more steps in the production run then just asking a machine to print but also includes a aura of craft, value and specialty that is missing in the digital output. The production process for screen printing invites the idea of multiplicity. Where a digital printer can make just one, screen printing just one would be entirely to much set up and work.
Hybrid Media Systems is an idea that takes the craft and unique nature of printmaking and blends it with technology to give the artifact an experience aspect, mediated by the dynamic affordance of screen based media and enhanced by the uniqueness of artifacts.
