Papyrus by Mike Chien and Will Constable
Our e-reader design is similar in size to the original Amazon Kindle but instead of an E-ink screen, it has a color touch-screen that will enable a more intuitive user interface. In addition, the cover is a flexible display that shows what the reader is currently reading. We focus on a streamlined and rich user experience, combining the advantages of wireless computing technology with the sensual and social aspects of reading physical books.
Home Page
As this device is made for reading books first, the home page for the device when turned on will be the users bookshelf. Images of the users books will be stacked, showing the bindings of their books, which conveys the sense of size, weight and perhaps density of the reading. A user would have the ability to scroll, sort and manage their bookshelf from this view.
Reading
One of the drawbacks to the Kindle reader we examined were the numerous buttons and the somewhat mechanical feeling to reading. We sought to mimic the sensation of turning paper and bookmarking pages through the use of a touchscreen interface.
• Turning pages: A swipe on the lower right or left corners would turn to the next or previous page.
• Bookmarking: A touch-and-drag motion in the upper right corner would create a bookmark for that location, mimicking folding a corner of a page.
Since this will also be a multimedia device, four dedicated buttons are located on the lower half of the screen and can be brought up with a simple tap on the screen. The four buttons are News, Online, Friends and Store.
News
This wifi enabled device will be able to pull current newspapers through a subscription service to any of the big multimedia enabled news outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Online
A touch sensitive browser will enable users to access the Internet from wherever they are, allowing an infinite amount of content to be accessible from this device.
Friends
Social networking and the social aspects of reading are accessible through this button on the device. The initial page is a map of the users location along with where their friends are located. Their status, books they are currently reading and some of their favorite books are all listed when their icon is clicked on. In addition, any of the books that a user clicks on will bring the user to the Store where they can purchase it for themselves. Users can lend a book electronically to a friend, giving up access to it while their friend reads, and then later electronically returns it.
Store
The store for the Papyrus enables the user to purchase books through the online system, which will deliver it directly to the device. A short summary, professional reviews and user ratings are all included on the individual book page. One of the aspects of bookstore browsing we also wanted to keep was the ability to scroll through a bookshelf of similar books either by author, topic, genre, bestseller, etc. This will enable the customers to essentially “walk through” the online bookstore in case any titles, covers or authors stand out.
