Development of mobile application to handle e-books for Malmö City Library
(2015) MAMM01 20151Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology
- Abstract
- The number of people who choose e-books rather than reading traditional paper books are increasing as a result of our world becoming more digitized. Libraries need to keep up with this trend and modernize its lending procedures for their digital products. The purpose and goal of this Master thesis were to answer the questions how e-books can become more attractive to those who have not yet dared to read them and how to make the whole experience more user friendly. There already exists a couple of solutions for borrowing e-books today, but the ones recommended by the public libraries are unnecessarily complicated which discourage users with lower technical confidence.
This Master thesis explored solutions for these problems and showed an... (More) - The number of people who choose e-books rather than reading traditional paper books are increasing as a result of our world becoming more digitized. Libraries need to keep up with this trend and modernize its lending procedures for their digital products. The purpose and goal of this Master thesis were to answer the questions how e-books can become more attractive to those who have not yet dared to read them and how to make the whole experience more user friendly. There already exists a couple of solutions for borrowing e-books today, but the ones recommended by the public libraries are unnecessarily complicated which discourage users with lower technical confidence.
This Master thesis explored solutions for these problems and showed an alternative approach where both the borrowing and reading features were supported in the same application. The development process was divided into four parts conducted over 20 weeks. The project started with mapping desired functionalities through evaluation of the current solution offered by the public library, conducting user surveys and by analyzing existing e-book applications. A design concept was then formed based on these mapping results by making a Lo-Fi prototype and then later a Mid-Fi prototype. These prototypes became the groundwork for the result of the thesis project, an executable Hi-Fi prototype application with a simulation of a loan. The final prototype was then evaluated through user studies, tests and compared to the current solution. No general results could be drawn from the user studies since only a small group could participate. For future development, tests should be conducted with the primary target group, consisting of persons already reading e-books who are also interested in borrowing. Such tests will result in more valuable feedback.
The conclusion of this thesis is that there are a number of obstacles ahead before a satisfactory solution is found. User friendly design is important, but in the end reading functionality and a sufficient enough selection of books are the most important aspects. Limitations due to the DRM protection and the bureaucracy rules of the libraries cause a lot of problems in making this a reality. To get around these restrictions and finding alternative solutions is in the end a question of getting more financing for the libraries. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/7440124
- author
- Tisander, Miriam LU and Ellerstedt, Elise LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MAMM01 20151
- year
- 2015
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- e-books, libraries, DRM protection, user friendly design, DL Reader, prototyping
- language
- English
- id
- 7440124
- date added to LUP
- 2015-06-24 14:01:26
- date last changed
- 2016-04-04 09:13:57
@misc{7440124,
abstract = {{The number of people who choose e-books rather than reading traditional paper books are increasing as a result of our world becoming more digitized. Libraries need to keep up with this trend and modernize its lending procedures for their digital products. The purpose and goal of this Master thesis were to answer the questions how e-books can become more attractive to those who have not yet dared to read them and how to make the whole experience more user friendly. There already exists a couple of solutions for borrowing e-books today, but the ones recommended by the public libraries are unnecessarily complicated which discourage users with lower technical confidence.
This Master thesis explored solutions for these problems and showed an alternative approach where both the borrowing and reading features were supported in the same application. The development process was divided into four parts conducted over 20 weeks. The project started with mapping desired functionalities through evaluation of the current solution offered by the public library, conducting user surveys and by analyzing existing e-book applications. A design concept was then formed based on these mapping results by making a Lo-Fi prototype and then later a Mid-Fi prototype. These prototypes became the groundwork for the result of the thesis project, an executable Hi-Fi prototype application with a simulation of a loan. The final prototype was then evaluated through user studies, tests and compared to the current solution. No general results could be drawn from the user studies since only a small group could participate. For future development, tests should be conducted with the primary target group, consisting of persons already reading e-books who are also interested in borrowing. Such tests will result in more valuable feedback.
The conclusion of this thesis is that there are a number of obstacles ahead before a satisfactory solution is found. User friendly design is important, but in the end reading functionality and a sufficient enough selection of books are the most important aspects. Limitations due to the DRM protection and the bureaucracy rules of the libraries cause a lot of problems in making this a reality. To get around these restrictions and finding alternative solutions is in the end a question of getting more financing for the libraries.}},
author = {{Tisander, Miriam and Ellerstedt, Elise}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Development of mobile application to handle e-books for Malmö City Library}},
year = {{2015}},
}