User friendly Digital Book Circles - A Case study on Traditional and Digital Book Circles with suggested Guidelines

Abstract: Humans have an amazing drive to create communities and gather around common interests or activities. Book circles, both traditional and digital ones, are examples of that. People read a book and then discuss it together to enrich the reading experience. But how do book circles form and what makes a reader want to them? Could values from traditional book circles be added to digital reading forums and what do people actually talk about when they discuss books?The aim of the study is to investigate how to design a user-friendly digital book circle by a case study of traditional and digital book circles. The method included observational studies, interviews and user surveys. The result showed that there were both different and similar problem areas and benefits in the two types. The topics that were discussed in the circles were similar in both traditional and digital book circles. But the social values in the traditional circles tend to be higher than in the digital ones in which convenience, anonymity, diversity and global interactions showed to be valued. The traditional book circles usually have one book and a meeting per month and do not talk in between their meetings. The digital book circles tend to have active book discussions during the reading. The findings from the user study were summarized in suggested guidelines for digital book circles.After the case study an iterative design process, inspired by IDEO, tookplace. The purpose of the design process was to design and test a digital book circle concept and visualize the suggested guidelines. The result was a design prototype with functionality to create, search for or join a book circle, participate in online discussions and use discussion topic cards for traditional book circle meetings. The user test showed that people understand the book circle concept of the design but the prototype needs further development in the discussion navigation. The potential for user-friendly digital book circle is high. The suggested guidelines and key findings from this study can help to find a direction for future research in this interesting field.