Brief: Design an experience that reveals what happens when we read.
Teammates: Moxue Jia, Qendresa Selimi, Max Hain
Literature Review—Readings
This research method is a search and evaluation of the available literature in a subject or chosen topic area. To cover more topics, we split up for research s a project kick-off. We explored different themes and initial ideas, from cognitive psychology to narratology.
Processing of text: Huey(1908) explored the differences between serial and parallel processing.
Eye movements: Rayner’s earlier study(1978) explored the three important components of eye movements in reading are the saccade, the fixation pause, and the regression.
Allocation of Attention: Anderson's paper(1982) examined the theory that important text information is better learned than less important information.
Enactivism: Caracciolo claims that Enactment of a “storyworld” is what makes the experience of reading rich and vivid.
Flow states & Wu wei: Csikszentmihalyi(1990) offered definition for the mental state of being ‘in Flow’: “…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake."
A few notes from what we read
Development
After having made a short explanation of each, we crossed the information and narrowed down the most attractive part: Reading Speed & Ability.
We found that the way we read—our ability, speed, comfort—is affected by word frequency, word predictability, as well as word complexity. This was proved by Liversedge et al. (2004, pp. 1013-1024).
Prototyping an experience meant that we could integrate concepts found more so in design than psychology, such as fonts and typesetting.
In designing this experience, we hoped to show some features of reading such as saccades, fixation pauses, and regressions, as well as emphasise the embodiment we experience when we read.
The picture below summarizes the factors that affect reading speed：
Next blog will be the last post of Term 1! You will read about how we conducted the prototyping method:)
References
1. Anderson, R.C. (1982) Allocation of attention during reading. In Advances in psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 292-305). North-Holland.
2. Caracciolo, M. (2014) The experientiality of narrative: An enactivist approach (Vol. 43). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
3. Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Csikzentmihaly, M. (1990) Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (Vol. 1990). New York: Harper & Row.
4. Huey, E.B. (1908) The psychology and pedagogy of reading. The Macmillan Company.
5. Liversedge, S.P., Rayner, K., White, S.J., Vergilino-Perez, D., Findlay, J.M. and Kentridge, R.W. （2004) Eye movements when reading disappearing text: Is there a gap effect in reading?. Vision Research, 44(10), pp.1013-1024.
6. Rayner, K. (1978) Eye movements in reading and information processing. Psychological bulletin, 85(3), p.618.