Academic E-ReadingThemes from User Experience Studies

Nicole Hennig, HeadMIT Libraries User Experience GroupNov. 8, 2011

Today’s talk

1. User needs study results

2. Mobile academic ereading - the current state

3. Mobile academic ereading - improving it

User Needs Research

Digital Scholarship Study

17 students kept diaries of their academic lives for a week

- in-depth interviews

how are new technologies & formats changing how students work?

Convenience wins Fragmentation hurts

Place matters

Themes

People count

Familiarity

Convenience wins

Time invested in familiar systems

Post-paper society - no more flipping through current journals

Convenience wins

Interlibrary borrowing?Just difficult enough to skip.

Difficult? change topic

Convenience wins

The convenience of pen & paper.

Convenience wins

Mobile works

Fragmentation hurts

Multiple storage solutions

Fragmentation hurts

Even “the cloud” is fragmented.

Fragmentation hurts

Fragmentation hurts

Work-arounds

Collaboration

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmakice/3462454985/

People count

Collaboration tools

People count

Alone together

People count

Distance tools

People count

Familiar experts

People count

Place matters

24-hours, work from everywhere

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcolwell/502787405/

Convenience wins Fragmentation hurts

Place matters

Themes

People count

“How might we?...”

A. Convenience wins1. How might we make our services as convenient as possible?

B. Fragmentation hurts1. 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?

Academic ebooks - current situation

We subscribe to many ebook packages, but most are not easy to read on mobile devices.

http://libguides.mit.edu/ereadingfaq

What we tell our users

Comparing features

What we look for

Students use of ebooks not growing

Chronicle of Higher Education

MIT Libraries Fall 2011 survey

77% have a smartphone or e-reader.

MIT Libraries Fall 2011 Survey. 6,500 responses, 44% response rate

MIT students want to 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

Expectations from non-academic e-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

Popular workshop

http://libguides.mit.edu/apps

Char Booth, Univ. of California, Berkeley

“Librarians must carve out new roles as advocates of more usable digital collections”

What academic ebooks could be

1. Solve user problems Convenience wins

Fragmentation hurts2. An ecosystem

3. Social contextPeople count

Medium matters

4. Take advantage of the medium

• pondering • thinking• taking notes • bookmarking• copying • quoting • defining words• underlining • highlighting • comparing with other text • skipping around• skimming• looking at photos • examining charts/graphs• citing• discussing

It’s more than reading

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bludgeoner86/2298513747/

Improved ways to annotate digital documents that allow for either typing or handwriting in a way that works easily and intuitively.

Easy annotation

Convenience wins

GoodReaderiAnnotate PDF

Allow for ease of saving and formatting citations in formats required.

Integration with citation tools

1Convenience wins

- Context, Not Containerby Brian O’Leary

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.

Convenience wins

Solve user problems

Allows one to be “device-agnostic”... change or upgrade device, keep your content.

Download once, read anywhere

Fragmentation hurts

Download once, read anywhere

Fragmentation hurts

Allows for easy organizing, saving, and moving content between devices and systems.

Integration with cloud tools

Fragmentation hurts

Allow for sharing of quotes and text snippets via email, Twitter, Google+, or other social media.

Social features, discussion

People count

Social features, discussion

People count

http://findings.com/

People count

People count

http://openmargin.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aufheben/494023168/

Text - also known as “formless” content

Medium matters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25541021@N00/4339699941/

Text + graphics, maps, diagrams- also known as “definite content”

Medium matters

— Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod

“.....definite content..... It may be reflowable, but depending on how it is reflowed, inherent meaning and quality of the text may shift.”

Formless vs. Definite Content

Medium matters

Allow for zooming in and out, with multi-touch gestures for very large, detailed images, maps, or diagrams.

Better ways to view illustrations

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/2230280043/

Medium matters

Learn from design of comic appsauto-zoom to each panel

What if zoom features were applied to scholarly illustrations?

Medium matters

3D images, rotation. Takes advantage of multi-touch & swipe.

The Elements, iPad app

Medium matters

- Books in the age of the iPadby Craig Mod

“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.”

Medium matters

Page turning metaphor

- Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod

“One simplistic reimagining of book layout would be to place chapters on the horizontal plane, with content on a fluid vertical plane.”

Medium matters

- Books in the age of the iPad

“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.”

by Craig Mod

Limitless space beyond the edges

Medium matters

- Context, Not Containerby Brian O’Leary

“The way we think about book, magazine, and newspaper publishing is unduly governed by the physical containers we have used for centuries to transmit information.”

Medium matters

- Context, Not Containerby Brian O’Leary

“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.”

DIY: create your own, mix/match

Medium matters

- 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

Librarians & scholarly publishers

Medium matters

- Analyzing the business case for DRMby Kirk Biglione

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?

DRM: Making informed decisions

Medium matters

http://book.pressbooks.com/chapter/analyzing-business-case-for-drm

Books in the age of the iPad by Craig Mod

Context, Not Container by Brian O’Leary

A social book

Analyzing the business case for DRM by Kirk Biglione

What academic ebooks could be

1. Solve user problems Convenience wins

Fragmentation hurts2. An ecosystem

3. Social contextPeople count

Medium matters

4. Take advantage of the medium

Nicole Hennighennig@mit.edu