Exploring Intended and Unintended Uses of (e)Books as Design Inspiration for Ambient Displays in the Home
Christiane Moser, Ilhan Aslan, Katja Neureiter, Ivana Randelshofer, Petra Sundström, Manfred Tscheligi · Interaction design & architecture(s)/ID&A Interaction design & architecture(s) · 2018
Books at home are used for more than reading, such as collecting them, using them as decoration, or expressing personality. In order to get a better understanding of intended and unintended uses of printed books, we conducted seven book tours in different homes followed by semi-structured interviews. This data was complemented with a large-scale online survey with 300 respondents. We describe our findings focusing on storage, sorting, decoration, and self-expressionand how they inspired us to develop a digital bookshelf (ambient display) as a technology probe to explore decoration with eBooks in the home. We argue for a transition from decoration with printed books to eBooks as design inspiration that does not simply replicate a bookshelf as ambient display, but makes eBooks tangible by combining users’ habits with qualities of digital material.