Investigating Tangible and Hybrid Interactions to Augment the Reading Experience

Abstract

For thousands of years, we as humans have been passing knowledge and telling stories through tangibly rich methods, beginning with writing on walls and even-tually evolving to printed books of today. However, the introduction of digital documents has recently created a world that has traded tangible richness for digital convenience. This thesis demonstrates innovative, tangible interfaces to help de-velop a possible future where digital documents can incorporate tangible elements. Furthermore, during our research, we discovered a pattern amongst people, where a hybrid approach to documents is becoming adopted. This discovery led to the investigation of hybrid experiences and the development of a system in which users can seamlessly switch between the physical and digital worlds.Each chapter of this thesis investigates a function of reading and its method both physically and digitally. Firstly we investigate the act of turning a page, a simple yet integral task of reading a modern book. This chapter explores materials and methods of bringing a tangible page-turning experience to digital books, followed by a user study and evaluation. Following this, we explore the use of tangible materials for side of device interactions. For example, printed books have many, frequently hundreds of pages, often have their edges felt, ruffled and flicked. Sev-eral interactions can be invoked through page edges, which are entirely removed from digital books. We design, develop and evaluate a guitar string-based system as a metaphor for page edges on a digital device.Many of us in this modern age carry on our person a smartphone, pretty much at all times. Smartphones have given us the ability to retrieve and read books wherever and whenever we please. However, the majority of people still prefer to read using physical methods. Having multiple formats to choose from has introduced a hybrid reading experience, where one might read physically at home and digitally whilst commuting, for example. We explore this experience, and the chapter follows a human-centred design approach to investigate, design, develop, and evaluate a digital bookmark system to switch between digital and physical books seamlessly.