An e-book composed in or converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or hand-held device e.g., Kindle, iPad or mobile. An e-Book is a non-editable, re-flowable book that is converted to a digital format to be read on any digital device such as a mobile.
e-Books, or electronic books, have a history dating back to the 1970s when researchers at Xerox PARC developed a prototype called the Dynabook. However, it wasn't until the 1990s when the World Wide Web was established that e-books started to gain more traction. In 1998, the first dedicated e-reader, the Rocket eBook, was introduced, but it wasn't until the launch of the Kindle by Amazon in 2007 that e-Books began to enter the mainstream market.
(above) Original Dynabook prototype
(above) Amazon’s Kindle is a tablet that allows users to store hundred of books on one digital device
Since then, there have been many advancements in e-Reader technology, and today, e-Books are available on various platforms, including smartphones, tablets, and dedicated e-readers, with millions of titles accessible to readers around the world. Kindle has proven to be the largest competitor in this market. In the first year of its launch, Amazon sold more e-Books than print books and as of 2021, the company has sold over 100 million Kindle tablets.
(above) Apple iBooks library iPad UI
(above) Apple iBooks library UI
In recent years, companies like Apple have successfully entered the e-Book market; their Apple’s Books application is now a very popular resource for online readers. While, Amazon continues to sell more e-Book copies; Apple’s Books are a tough competitor as they allow users to utilise their existing Apple eco-system to read; integrating their library over a range of devices, rather than buying a Kindle.
In class, I began to sketch out storyboards which allowed me to consider the current user-flow my website prototype followed. Storyboards allow a designer to consider the minimum amount of steps or sections necessary to communicate your idea by putting yourself in the shoes of the audience or user that will be using the digital product.
(above) Sketching e-Book storyboard
(above) Sketching e-Book storyboard
While sketching the screens, I realised that the websites pacing did not effectively create a tense, ominous tone which will successfully engage the audience in the conspiracy narrative I developed earlier. Following this lecture, I realised an e-Book may be a much more interesting and relevant format for communicating the narrative I had developed surrounding Apollo 11. An e-Book will allow me to better emulate the concept of a user reading through a classified folder than the website prototype I had begun to create; producing a much more fluid user-flow that will successfully immerse the user within the story.
After deciding to convey the story of Apollo 11 through an e-Book instead of a website, I began to explore the methods designers have used to produce visually engaging designs in the traditional form of this medium: print design. I have included a link to my study of how print designers have utilised elements like information hierarchy, imagery and typography to successfully convey a narrative through methods beyond the textual content within traditional mediums like newspapers and books.
While I have decided to change the format of my final outcome, I was still happy with the visual guide that I had already creating for my website prototype. I plan to maintain much of the aesthetic elements from this experiment including the illusion of a classified folder as I think it still effectively communicates the narrative I had constructed at the beginning of this project.
Below I have included sketches I made to understand how I will organise the content to create a gripping narrative which depicts the Apollo 11 mission. It was interesting developing these sketches to allow the content to be spaced out a lot more; creating a slow pace and building the stories tension. I plan to do this by including pages which provide smaller amounts of content for the user to easily digest before they proceed through the story.