Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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User Experience, Reader Experience (Brett Sandusky)

Brett Sandusky is Product Manager at Macmillan New Ventures where he oversees agile user experience design, development of new digital products, eCommerce, research and data analysis, and mobile applications. Formerly Director of Product Innovation for Kaplan Publishing, Brett’s expertise also includes digital strategy, product usability, content integration cross-platforms, and digital marketing. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and can be found on Twitter at: @bsandusky.

Let’s start with a hypothesis: ebooks, as we know them today, are an artificial and interim step in digital development by publishers. As such, they will go away.

In any discussion of the current and future states of ebook development, in particular with regards to User Experience (UX), it is inevitable to begin with this pronouncement. As we delve into UX principles and how they affect digital product development, usability and reception, we begin to see that the ebook for what it is, and how it will evolve.

There are many definitions for User Experience. In fact, it is a discipline that covers many areas of concern. While some practitioners limit their scope to only issues related to usability, contextual inquiry or design, UX does, in reality, encompass all of these issues and extends further to encompass a holistic approach to product design and implementation.

This means that the actual scope of UX covers everything from the first sparks of ideation, ...