Sussex students tackle the eBook issue

Undergraduate students at the University of Sussex are engaging with one of the biggest issues in digital publishing today: eBooks.

The students’ first year Human Computer Interaction (HCI) module asks them to design an “electronic document shopping system” that could enable book publishers to create a unique environment dedicated to the marketing and sale of electronic-only content.

We were invited to talk to the students, explaining a little bit about the commercial environment of perfoming HCI, or usability design, and how their project relates to the live work that we do at Semantico. Expecting a sea of blank faces, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were interested, listening, and even posed a few questions. Questions that, sometimes, were not easy to answer.

Here’s the news:

Student: “I just wanted to know why DRM is still an issue considering the lessons learned by the music industry, now that iTunes has unlocked everything”.

Me: “erm…”

To be honest, I don’t know. There are lots of issues affecting the feasibility of eBook publishing models right now, from user demand to digital paper technology, but DRM is a funny one. In many respects, the student in question had just pointed out the elephant in many of our rooms.

But that’s old ground. What was even more informative about the time I spent on campus on behalf of Semantico was seeing and hearing today’s University students in action, and it caused me to think again about the nature of user research. Are we trying to design for today, or to capture and anticipate tomorrow?

eBook publishing stands on the brink of a new era. Users may not know yet what they want. We may need to take the lead in answering some of the biggest questions: What do we sell – chapters, volumes or subscriptions? How do we monitor use? Who controls the content? Is platform independence possible?

Those students didn’t have the answers, but as many of the boldest and most successful online innovations have germinated in halls just like this around the world, we are certainly going to be listening to their ideas.