Investigating lightweight interaction for active reading in digital documents
Reading is a complex human activity evolved, and co-evolved, with technology over thousands of years. Mass printing in the fifteenth century firmly established what we know as the modem book, with its physical format of covers and paper pages, and now-standard features such as page numbers. Today, electronic documents are enabling paperless reading supported by eReading technologies such as Kindles and Nooks, yet a high proportion of users still opt to print on paper before reading. This persistent 'print to read' mentality is one sign of the shortcomings of digital documents. The physical properties of paper (for example, it is light, thin and flexible) contribute to the ease with which physical documents are manipulated and pose a completely different set of affordances to their digital 'equivalents'. Paper can be folded, ripped or scribbled on almost subconsciously - activities that require significant cognitive attention in their digital form. The almost subliminal interaction that comes from years of learned behaviour with paper has been described as 'lightweight interaction' which is achieved when a person actively reads an article in a way that is so unselfconscious that they are not apt to remember
Pearson, Jennifer Sarah
Investigating lightweight interaction for active reading in digital documents. Reading is a complex human activity evolved, and co-evolved, with technology over thousands of years. Mass printing in the fifteenth century firmly established what we know as the modem book, with its physical format of covers and paper pages, and now-standard features such as page numbers. Today, electronic documents are enabling paperless reading supported by eReading technologies such as Kindles and Nooks, yet a high proportion of users still opt to print on paper before reading. This persistent 'print to read' mentality is one sign of the shortcomings of digital documents. The physical properties of paper (for example, it is light, thin and flexible) contribute to the ease with which physical documents are manipulated and pose a completely different set of affordances to their digital 'equivalents'. Paper can be folded, ripped or scribbled on almost subconsciously - activities that require significant cognitive attention in their digital form. The almost subliminal interaction that comes from years of learned behaviour with paper has been described as 'lightweight interaction' which is achieved when a person actively reads an article in a way that is so unselfconscious that they are not apt to remember
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