The Future of Fiction
Amazon Kindle
Reinventing the Reading Experience
How can we improve the experience of reading Fiction?
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Animations & advanced text layout
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Supplemental interactive content
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Direct communication with authors
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Augmented reality for paper books
FUNCTIONALITY:
What would a reading experience look like in the future?
I participated in the annual company-wide planning process by conducting a was a "Blue Sky" exploration of proposed functionality to help determine resource allocation for the upcoming year
My Role:
Collaborated with Director of Design to generate "Blue Sky" concepts
Created the experience and refined it via multiple iterations
Prototyped a detailed walk-through for senior Amazon stakeholders to help determine resource allocation during annual planning
TEXT AND ANIMATION EFFECTS
On a hand-held device, Images are animated, and text includes advanced typographic elements such as drop caps and reflowing text.
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AUTHOR COMMENTARY AND UPDATES
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Create communication channel for the author directly in the book - readers get immediate access to new material and commentary in the book whenever it is made available by the author
SUPPLEMENTAL INTERACTIVE CONTENT
Interactive content includes hotspots on images, pop-ups with supplemental information, interactive maps and timelines.
PAN AND ZOOM FUNCTIONALITY
I also explored pan and zoom functionality that is appropriate to device size - on larger devices, two-finger gestures would be used, but on small devices, panning images is controlled with a thumb
AUGMENTED REALITY FOR PAPER BOOKS
I also explored using augmented reality to bring interactivity to a physical book by providing supplemental information in-context using text recognition
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IMPACT
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Ideas were presented to senior stakeholders during the annual company-wide planning and was used to determine the level of investment into Kindle features
Generated new design patterns future projects and raised the bar on innovation for reading devices