The Living Cover
Many people used to think that the internet would mean the end of libraries and libarians be replaced by robots. The City Library of Malmö is much more than that. The libraries and librarians are providing resources, support and services that you simply cannot get from a computer. Our goal was to display the knowledge of librarians and to develop a tool that helps them to highlight and expand the books directly at the shelf.
Outline
Master studies project
Course: Interaction Design
Team of 3
Methodologies
Ethnography
Prototyping
Outcome
We designed a working prototype that we installed and tested in the Malmö University Library.
Highlights of the process
Ethnographic exploration
In the first half of the project, we spend a lot of time in the Malmö City Library. We really wanted to understand the place as a space and get some insight into the meaning of the place for people. We shadowed library visitors and librarians to understand their movement. In a second step, we interviewed some of the librarians and visitors.
Ideation
From the findings of the field work, we focused on the knowledge the librarians carry with them about their material and the fact that people seem to enjoy personal recommendations. However, we also saw in the field that the current recommendations perished in the big space of the library. We decided to highlight recommended books with a small animation on the book cover to catch the eye of the visitor. When interacting with the book, the animation changes and disappears “inside” the book.
Prototyping & testing
As an interdisciplinary team, we were able to build different prototypes. Starting in the class room where we focused on the interaction of the Kinect and a person grabbing a book, we then moved on to install our final prototype in the Malmö University library.
We tested the prototype with accidental visitors and collected some feedback.
