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METHODS
Literature Review
Contextual Interviews
Co-Design
Experience Design Theatre
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MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Team of 4
DURATION
8 weeks: March 2024 - May 2024
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Qualitative User Research & Design Methods
Literature Review
Focus Groups
Contextual Interviews
Co-Design
Experience Design Theatre
My Role
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Duration
6 weeks: March 2024 - May 2024
METHODS
Literature Review
Contextual Interviews
Co-Design
Experience Design Theatre
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UX Designer
DURATION
8 weeks: March 2024 - May 2024
Overview
This is a qualitative research and design project proposing a prototype for a social leisure reading experience to incentivize students to engage in leisure reading. The intervention aims to leverage the benefits of leisure reading to improve the well-being of Cornell University students under academic and professional pressure.
Problem / Motivation
Universities are acknowledged as the prime setting for higher education, yet in the pursuit and pressure of academic excellence, there is a dwindling number of students who read for leisure.
Based on our interactions with students, we have observed that academic and professional obligations of college students often prevent them from seeking leisure reading as a consistent habit.
Literature Review
UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT: UNIVERSITY STUDENT STRESS & LEISURE READING
As students transition to university, their reading habits shift primarily toward academic and pedagogical materials, leaving little time for leisure reading. The decline in recreational reading is particularly notable among college-aged individuals, who are now the least likely demographic to engage in it. (Weigart, 2008). At the same time, college students experience high levels of stress (e.g., academic pressures, social adjustments, time constraints). Research suggests that, despite its decline, leisure reading offers significant benefits for well-being, such as reducing stress and improving focus (Gauder et al., 2009), which can serve as a cost-efficient and simple buffer against college stressors (Levine et al., 2023).
PROJECT POTENTIAL: (TECHNOLOGICAL) SOCIAL LEISURE READING FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
In particular, we proposed that there is potential in shaping (technological) social leisure reading experiences among Cornell student communities through its ability to:
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Improve accountability for continued reading (Massimi et al., 2009), which may increase the sustainability of reading habits and thus well-being
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Improve engagement and understanding among readers with different perspectives (Vlieghe et al., 2009) for more productive and richer reading experiences
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Cultivate reading interests among individuals (Vlieghe et al., 2009), deepening motivations in reading and increasing the spread/impact of such habits.
CONTRIBUTION: WHAT NEW PERSPECTIVES WOULD OUR PROJECT ADD TO THE DESIGN SPACE?
There exists robust research on university leisure reading patterns, social leisure reading motivations and benefits, and corresponding technologies. However, there is a gap in the intersection of all of these aspects: social leisure reading and improving well-being for university students. Thus, our research aimed to explore:
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behaviors, motivations, and contexts of college students' different reading behaviors (or lack thereof)
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characteristics of a social leisure reading experience that can motivate and sustain their leisure reading habits
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how to support these practices while balancing college students' needs (e.g., academic, social, personal).
Contextual Interviews
Initial Insights + Understanding
To start, our target audience consists of Cornell undergraduate students, including those who read on a more frequent (daily/weekly) or infrequent (monthly/less) basis, to get a more holistic picture of the problem space in reading motivation. Participants for each of our following research studies were recruited from this group through outreach via our social networks.
We conducted contextual interviews with 10 participants to obtain initial insights into the reading motivations and habits of our user group.
Group | MOTIVATIONS | STRATEGIES | ATTITUDES |
|---|---|---|---|
All | Reading in a conducive environment/mindset, time management | ||
Frequent Readers | Relaxation, escapism, enjoyment, exploration. | Read in comfortable settings at their own pace. Discover books through social media, friends, online browsing. | Positive – see it as a pleasurable activity. |
Infrequent Readers | Lack intrinsic motivation + prefer more engaging forms of entertainment (e.g. sports, games) | Engage with reading when it aligns w their interests or is more interactive | Negative/indifferent – less engaging vs other activities |
Method I: Co-Design
Delving Deeper
In short, although students' motivations to engage in leisure reading differ, there is an openness to engage in it should the opportunity be "conducive of the activity". To investigate this further, we chose to conduct co-design sessions as our first research method to explore students' individualized perceptions of social reading as a possible intervention.
Co-design is a research method that harnesses the user’s creativity and experience to co-create initial prototypes and design ideations. We did such via mood-boards to gain a holistic understanding of themes included in the individuals’ reading experience. With 9 participants, we facilitated empathy-building and co-created solutions during the design process.
Insights from Co-Design Session - Brainstorming
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Primary Takeaways of Co-Design - the Initial Guidelines
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A "comfortable" environment during a period in which:
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the student has little to no other pressing obligations -> place intervention in "downtime" contexts
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reading presents itself as an intriguing activity -> incorporate novelty, playfulness, or curiosity triggers
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Although having friends would boost their motivation, some students were more comfortable reading alone. -> provide optional social features
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Students who would like to read with others prefer doing so in a physical/intimate setting. -> enable small-scale, co-located interactions
Through the conclusion of our Method I, we began the brainstorming process.
Ideation & Initial Design
From our initial guideline, we created our first prototype called geocaching reading stations (GRS), implemented across campus social settings (e.g., dining halls and lecture halls before class) to gamify the social leisure reading experience. They integrate SMS and GPS to send story excerpts of varying lengths to students’ messaging apps in successive order that provide a spark for mutual excitement and clue users in on their distance from a geocaching station. Waiting for students upon their discovery of the station is the audio playing of the story itself, which students may find conversational purposes, and a final text message linking to the full material for later reference.
Method II: Experience Design Theatre (EDT)
Test, Ideate, Design
For our method II, we recruited 4 participants for an EDT – an iterative series of enacted emotions, interactions, and contexts in a scene, with feedback from an audience of target users, used in the early design stages – to produce an experience design that better aligns our team’s prototypes and potential users’ social reading experiences at Cornell.
Process:
Scene 1: Interaction -> Scene 2: Discover -> Final Performance: Discovery + Interaction
Idea 1
Geocaching reading stations + SMS integration
1. Increasingly long, sequential text excerpts (to each other and to people of the same distance away from a station) to hint at each station's location.
2. Awaiting users at each station is an audio + message of the full text and poster for new users to opt in to the geocaching program.
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Insights
Gamification of the social reading experience
Idea 2
Literature-based bus tracking app
1. Readers can track their bus's distance (by #stops/time) from them based on text message frequency/length.
2. On the bus awaits an audio + message of the full text with a poster for new users to download the app.
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Insights
Less intrusive in daily routine; fill a "void".
More "trustworthy"
Idea 3
Book club on the go - library + TCAT
1. Tablet installations around campus attract passerby attention & invite interaction with literature + commentary of its content.
2. On the bus, audio text invites student conversation about audio content while awaiting arrival at their destination, and introductions to the installations.
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Insights
More intimate/in-person social reading experience
EDT Thematic Analysis
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Primary Takeaways of Experience Design Theatre (EDT) - OUR GUIDELINE
Through the generated prototypes, interactions, and use contexts, we uncovered additional design guidelines building on our co-design:
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Common values voiced through each critique -> place the intervention in an unobtrusive, non-time-consuming, intimate, and optionally collaborative context.
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Embedding the solution in well-established programs like transportation and library -> ensure the intervention is public-facing and credible.
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Increasingly taking advantage of intrigue as an opportunity to capture focused attention/purpose and create indirect social interaction -> let people gather, rather than compelling them to.
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Bus radio as reading + ambience -> provide optional reading features.
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Emphasis on shared spaces/media that captures rather than distract from mutual focus. -> enable opportunities for shared, face to face attention.
Hence, at the end of the EDT, we arrived at “Book Club On-the-Go,” a collaborative program between campus libraries and the TCAT (community bus system) that features a new book monthly. Students access this program via broadcast and audiobooks on the TCAT and pass by a tablet displaying an annotative e-book in front of a campus library.
Current Design
Following along this trend, we mused – “What if the tablet were an open book instead? A giant one at that, and with sticky notes, stickers, and markers, instead of digital highlights and annotations.”
Students conversing about the TCAT audio system during their transit to/from campus.
Students conversing and annotating the oversized book in front of the library.
Results and Impact
More on: why this intervention, and why here? The prototype supports our previous definition of social leisure reading, i.e., reading in one’s free time in social contexts, through:
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Drawing attention to reading material in non-working times and locations: Participants from our EDT suggested the TCAT and library, places they frequented during “off-work” times, and thus were non-obligatory and non-intrusive to their routine. This convenience aligns with our contextual and co-design interview findings as a primary driver of student reading engagement. Our prototype draws attention through broadcasting the reading material aloud on the TCAT, a familiar (non-intrusive) alternative to its current music playing; the open book’s comical size is also exposed to foot traffic in front of the library without disrupting indoor work activities.
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Making reading shareable and conversational: The TCAT broadcasting system makes the reading audible to passengers, encouraging them to engage with the reading by conversing with their peers. The oversized book acts as an “art installation”, inviting conversation from passersby. Its physical pagination allows readers to be situated on an additional page simultaneously, presenting comparatively increased spatial comfort in managing pacing in co-reading to smaller devices (Massimi et al., 2009), while allowing both the physical intimacy of reading with a familiar peer (for simultaneous co-readers – a primary social reading preference from our co-design) or providing the asynchronicity of digital reading forums, allowing for sharing of interests across greater quantities of “co-readers” (Vlieghe et al., 2009) (for readers conversing via sticky note threads).
Our prototype also aligns with our propositions for social leisure reading to deepen engagement, boost motivation, and cultivate a long-term reading habit:
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Engagement: Forming networks driven by desires to cultivate passions for literature engages people of different perspectives to collectively deepen understanding and appreciation of the material (Vlieghe et al., 2009). Our prototype facilitates conversation about the reading through verbal conversations on the TCAT and physical gathering around our open book, as well as using sticky note threads to deepen both synchronous and asynchronous readers’ understanding of the reading content.
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Motivations & interest: Our prototype shares literature sources and garners interest in reading material that individuals may not be committed to or have access to otherwise. This aligns with our co-design interviews and literature review (Massimi et al., 2009) that highlighted active community recommendations as a socially-motivating factor on leisure reading habits. The sticky note threads of our open book allow students to “reverse-engage” with our book – i.e. students who may just be interested in the conversational content become motivated to engage with the book if the conversational content incorporates contexts that are comprehensible only by directly knowing the book’s content.
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Sustainable reading habits: The sticky note threads provide an asynchronous means of continual conversation within the book. This book’s analog form lends itself to an element of anticipation and surprise that draws readers into the ever-changing book notes.
Future Work and Reflection
Future work:
We note our current prototype’s limitations in its inability to conclusively demonstrate the effects of boosting accountability, social motivation, and engagement for supporting the sustained well-being of college students. Due to scope, our findings might not generalizable beyond the Cornell student population.
Future research could explore validation of the prototype, longer term interactions, and expansion to other campuses for a more comprehensive understanding of how our prototype aligns with college students' reading experiences.
Reflection:
This project was a fresh perspective in my design journey, as it diverged from my usual focus on imagining new technologies to respond to a problem.
While our initial research and prototype imagined tech-driven solutions to maximize social reading at Cornell, our current prototype adopts a similarly viable, low-tech solution. Simply leveraging audio and book size increases intrigue and accessibility of social reading for both synchronous and asynchronous co-readers, while accommodating intimate reading experiences desired in our user research.
Designing for the subjective reading experience across a more complex audience of both more and less avid leisure readers, this project also taught me to embrace complexity, rather than trying to simplify it.
