ORNELLA SANFILIPPO
SELECTED WORK
The Reading Space” is a UX/UI project investigating digital reading issues and the design of the spaces we use to read. While the paper book is a great device that we’ve been using for thousands of years, its digital version does not seem to be equally efficient.
Recent studies being carried out by psychologist and computer scientists linked to digital reading have been investigating how the technology we use to read change the way we read, how the digital medium has an effect on recall and comprehension of the information and how digital readers have difficulty constructing an effective cognitive map due to the lack of contextual cues and the ineffective navigation that digital text offers. Guided by a set of guidelines I draw from these studies, I designed a desktop e-reader interface with the aim to identify potential design features that can address the mapping issues that arise with on-screen reading.
The Reading Space,
spatial memory
and User Interface.
UX and UI design
July 2018
Graduation project @AKV St. Joost (NL)
What we know from digital reading research is that when it comes to supporting in-depth reading to process long, information-rich texts, on-screen reading interface designs seems to fall short.
The primary problem with e-books, and long digital text in general, is that readers have difficulty constructing an effective cognitive map due to the lack of spatial cues and the ineffective navigation that digital text offers.
In other words, digital text appears to be significantly less efficient with regards to memory and retention because they fail in supporting spatial memory. When we read from a book seemingly irrelevant elements such as whether a piece of information is located at the top or at the bottom of the page, on the right or on the left page, at the beginning or at the end of the book, are actually functioning as cues in the act of the recalling.
While paper books possess features that make them easily navigable, thereby tapping into our innate well-developed spatial memory, most screens, e-readers, smartphones and tablets interfere with the intuitive navigation of a text and inhibit people from mapping the journey in their minds. Although there is evidence for spatial attributes playing a role in human memory, and subsequently in our ability to retain what we just read, in most examples, digital reading interfaces do not take advantage of this. Instead, the current design of digital books seems to be based solely on the metaphor of the traditional paper book but with features that are actually shackling the user’s ability to remember spatial locations.
The issue with digital reading
In conceiving possible ways of visualising my main concept, and establishing which feature may work best, I produced a series of prototypes followed by testing sessions with readers. Observations and reader feedback were used to answer all the subquestions that were raised in the design process and to identify promising directions for further developments.
Since the variety of digital reading devices available, with various configurations, displays and features. My focus is narrowed down on the display of long, information-rich texts on-screen as well as digital books accessed by computer screens.
Design process
