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Why the current ScrollMotion isn’t the best e-reader for enjoying novels on your iPhone
December 25, 2008 | 4:17 am
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By Ken Brooks, Cengage SVP, Global Production and Manufacturing Services
Moderator’s note: The opinions below are reproduced with Ken’s permission from the Reading 2.0 list, where his post appeared in a slightly different form. The headline is ours. – D.R.
I’ve been reading one of the ScrollMotion titles, and I find that while the application is attractive visually, there’s too much involved in going from page to page for reasonable immersion in narrative fiction. There are two concepts that are relevant here: “Reading Space” and “Cognitive Load.”
While I’m sure there are other names for it, reading space is that place you go when you’re reading a story where you’re actually *in* the story and the outside world disappears. For me, and for many, that’s the essence of narrative fiction—getting into that space and staying there. There’s actually a slight shock in emerging from that space and a slight effort in re-entering.
The cognitive load factor: Less is better
The second concept is cognitive load. Cognitive load was something that Martin Eberhard, one of the original founders of NuvoMedia (remember the Rocket eBook?) first told me about—the amount of non-content oriented thinking you have to do to progress through a book. The more thinking you have to do about navigating a book, the less likely it is that you can stay in reading space. Unfortunately navigation links in the middle of content disrupt my personal reading experience and knock me out of my reading space. That’s precisely what that cute, page-turn icon on the ScrollMotion reader does. It’s very distracting.
On the other hand, the continuous page-to-page, or more precisely, screen-to-screen, navigation provided by eReader, Sony Reader, and the Kindle, for example, do not do this. I’m hoping that either I haven’t found the setting yet that allows this to be turned off, or that in the next release of the software, such a setting is provided.
A separate point on downloadable reading apps: I think it’s just a matter of penetration of the particular reading app and how “heavy” the application is. Back in the Peanut Press days, if you bought a particular book, the app came down with the purchase—it wasn’t very big and it saved much consumer confusion about what to do. I think that’s changed over time probably due to the size of the app and the (now past) loyalty of readers to platform.
Detail: For reference or learning material, the navigation is actually part of the experience. It is fiction to which I’m referring in the above post. That is where immersion counts.
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Comments:
Cognitive load is an interesting point – it helps explain why (even though it is not the same as reading fiction) web browsing is such a distracting experience.
And it also is a factor that people who recommend a laptop or netbook as a cost-effective alternative to dedicated ereaders should consider. I’ve used these and tabletPCs and find they are just too distracting to use for immersive reading.
Interesting point, RJH. But when I owned an OLPC machine, I used FBReader to help me immerse myself in novels. That way I could see full screens of text without interruption. A quick roll of a mouse wheel advanced me a page. Some might not like the mouse, but it worked for me. You may need to make adjustments in one of the menus so that a quick wheel roll advances you a full page.
Significantly, just about all those netbooks, including the linux ones, can run FBReader. Too bad FBReader can’t read books infested with DRM, but that has its positives as well, LOL.
For commercial books on XT notebooks, Mobipocket and eReader would be interesting possibilities since they, too, can work with the wheels of USB mice.
Thanks,
David