Designer+Futurist from Northumberland. Graphic Design student at Leeds College of Art.

Jul 28, 2016

The role interaction design has in transitioning humanity to a truly digital species

I like books, and I like technology, but in the past I’ve struggled to find a way to properly merge the two interests. Usually it has been one of two factors to blame — an insufficient digital offering, or the tactile appeal and simplicity of the traditional, physical medium.

A physical book, after all, was my only option until I got my first smartphone. By that point I must’ve read around a hundred books, and the book as a physical piece of interaction design seemed to have performed fine. It was easily accessible at all times, easy to skip through and move back or forward a page almost instantly. There was also something about its tangibility that created an almost romantic design detail, whether it be communicated by the front cover, the feel of the pages, or the smell of the raw materials. The book, as a piece of design and engineering, has remained largely unchanged since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. The reason for this is simple: it, like the hammer or the needle, is a borderline perfect tool. It has done its job in the most efficient and practical of ways for a number of centuries, and so any attempt to impose a change on such a proven format was obviously one which would be met with difficulty. Adaptation takes time.

The effort to transition the way people read from a physical format to a digital format was and is an obvious and inevitable one, for both economical and environmental reasons. The key in catalysing this transition is the introduction of a new reason: usability.

Early attempts at digitising the book had mixed results, and I assert that only one company has the right to claim success over the first truly popular e-book —Amazon, and the Kindle. Released in 2007, it took only three years for Kindle e-books to overtake the sale of hardcover books for the first time in history, and by 2011 Amazon was selling more digital books than all of its printed books combined. By this point both Apple and Google had their own offerings in the form of iBooks and Google Play Books.

So it was clear that people could be won over, and that digital books could indeed claim victory over their physical ancestors. But for me, the Kindle wasn’t enough. Whilst it had solved the low-quality display problem that had plagued the e-book readers that came before it, I wasn’t won over by its original lack of a backlight or the odd transition effect every time you clicked over to a new page. The device wasn’t particularly nice to hold or operate, and although the page-turning buttons were efficient, they felt unnatural. It didn’t feel particularly futuristic or exciting, and the fact you had to carry it around alongside your other devices somewhat negated the benefit of maneuverability that digital books have over physical ones. It ticked the first two boxes of benefit: ‘economical’ and ‘environmental’, but it failed with the last one: ‘usability’.

On one hand it was better than what a lot of smartphone based readers offered. The Kindle app, as well as the likes of iBooks, gave an even worse experience than the Kindle itself — they were awkward and unresponsive in use, and the benefit over an actual book was limited to not having to carry anything around except your phone to access whatever book you wanted. In order to be truly successful, and to negate virtually every advantage a physical book has over a digital one, there needs to be a smiling satisfaction, even a degree of fun, involved in their operation. That ‘usability’ box needs to be ticked. The digital experience of using a digital book would have to be even easier, and much more satisfying, than using an actual book.

I encountered the experience closest to this a few months ago in the reader app for Google Play Books, and it achieves it in the simplest of ways.

Digital, numberless pages have an unseen advantage against physical books — an ignorance towards your progress. The absence of always-on visual progress cues tied with the rapidness in which you read screen-sized pages prevents you from being put off due to a lack of progress.

It’s one of the simplest yet most profound animations I’ve encountered. Aesthetically it’s nothing to write home about, but it strikes something. Something familiar, something I’ve encountered before just not here. It plays an amazing trick on the brain — we know that this particular piece of interaction isn’t with a book but with a screen of text, and yet the experience is not too dissimilar. It’s a borderline perfect piece of skeuomorphism, one that doesn’t go too far, one that embraces the digital without eschewing the positive experience of the physical.

The interface design is as good as the interaction design— feature-full, attractively minimalist and relatively easy to use. The only drawback is its responsiveness — intentional latency is never a good design decision, there is zero benefit. When we ask something of a machine, we expect immediate results, and anything less will not suffice; it’ll only encourage impatience, annoyance and dissatisfaction.

As a former proponent of a flat digital world, one free of what I deemed unnecessary links to the physical, I now see the value for that link. I see the case for its use, the fun of skeuomorphism. It provides the benefits of the digital — maneuverability, adaptability, portability, invincibility, with the benefits of the physical — the experience. To truly transition humanity to a digital-only world, we have to merge the benefits of the digital with the experience of the physical — ease of use, satisfaction, adaptability, excitement, fun. It is only then that we’ll be happy to put our physical books down.