Reading is a complex human activity that has evolved and co-evolved with technology over
thousands of years. Mass printing in the fifteenth century firmly established what we know as
the modern book with its physical format of covers and paper pages and now-standard features
such as page numbers footnotes and diagrams. 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 habit of
printing to read is one sign of the shortcomings of digital documents -- although the
popularity of eReaders is one sign of the shortcomings of paper. How do we get the best of both
worlds? The physical properties of paper (for example it is light thin and flexible)
contribute to the ease with which physical documents are manipulated but these properties have
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 if they are even possible. The nearly subliminal interaction
that comes from years of learned behavior with paper has been described as lightweight
interaction which is achieved when a person actively reads an article in a way that is so easy
and unselfconscious that they are not apt to remember their actions later. Reading is now in a
period of rapid change and digital text is fast becoming the predominant mode of reading. As a
society we are merely at the start of the journey of designing truly effective tools for
handling digital text. This book investigates the advantages of paper how the affordances of
paper can be realized in digital form and what forms best support lightweight interaction for
active reading. To understand how to design for the future we review the ways reading
technology and reader behavior have both changed and remained constant over hundreds of years.
We explore the reasoning behind reader behavior and introduce and evaluate several user
interface designs that implement these lightweight properties familiar from our everyday use of
paper. We start by looking back reviewing the development of reading technology and the
progress of research on reading over many years. Drawing key concepts from this review we move
forward to develop and test methods for creating new and more effective interactions for
supporting digital reading. Finally we lay down a set of lightweight attributes which can be
used as evidence-based guidelines to improve the usability of future digital reading
technologies. By the end of this book then we hope you will be equipped to critique the
present state of digital reading and to better design and evaluate new interaction styles and
technologies.
