Editing Research/new digital reading experiences (section)

== ELECTIVE: DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHY ==

What better way to share and question the outcomes of our research than by involving the students themselves? We designed a 5-days' workshop that set out to find new ways to design text for mobile screens.<br />
Our first question to our students was simple: ''“What kind of texts do you read digitally?”'' One student answered: “Subtitles.” Funny, unexpected, and somehow very true. From that moment, we knew the experiment would be full of surprises.

For the content of the workshop, we chose the cookbook ''[https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/steingarten-everything.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin The Man Who Ate Everything]'' by Jeffrey Steingarten—a mix of text types including recipes, anecdotes, and quirky culinary adventures. Its variety made it perfect for the research: students could take any approach they liked, exploring new ways for visual storytelling.

Other than the change in content, we defined the assignment to follow our own research guidelines, to see how the students will approach the same design challenge and what kind of examples they will create.

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=== The Assignment  ===

In an era of rapid technological evolution, the design systems and habits surrounding reading experiences have remained relatively static. This project aims to explore how digital typography can revolutionize reading experiences by rethinking design systems and enhancing usability.

Choose a piece of text (at least three paragraphs) from ‘The man who ate everything’.

* Create a design system that enhances the digital reading experience, primarily aimed at smartphones. Think especially about things that are possible on smartphones that are not possible in a printed book.
* Use your chosen text to showcase the design system that you created but be aware that this design system needs to be applicable to the whole book (it’s fine if you mainly focus on specific types of content, such as recipes or diaries).
* Present your design as a mockup, or (even better) as a working prototype on the web.

The students were investigating, experimenting and prototyping for a week, guided by us throughout the whole process.

Results<br />
The outcomes were wonderfully diverse. Some focused on clarity and readability, others on tone and personality. Every interpretation highlighted a new way of thinking about text on a small screen. We laughed and learned, and so did the students.<br />
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Looking back, we were struck by what resonated most, for the students and for us. Their reading habits and creative choices were surprising and inspiring, showing us how Gen Z interacts with text. This Elective workshop became the starting point for the next year of our research, setting the stage for deeper exploration into digital reading, and how text can truly adapt to the ways people consume it today.

[[File:Daniela_Hmelnicka_Prototype_video.gif|250px]] [[File:OmidNemalhabib_Salt.gif|250px]]  [[File:RenskeElectiveRec.gif|250px]] [[File:Anastasia_Trishankova_screen recording_figma.gif|400px]]

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=== Conclusions ===

Even though AI tools proved to be a little erratic, our workflow and designs are promising. However, our most important conclusion comes from students’ input in our Elective: '''Gen Z actually reads a lot but just prefers their text in formats that don’t really fit the traditional definition of reading.'''<br />
The majority consume most of their text on social media, where it is presented in very different ways than traditional text design. The overall quality of the content is often debatable, and the design doesn’t look very attractive from a classic designers’ point of view, but we felt like there is a lot of unexplored potential there.

One of our main reasons for researching digital reading experiences was to attract new audiences. During the Elective it suddenly became very clear what the audience we defined as our audience actually reads and what we could do to get to it. This finding led us to refine our research question, which we will discuss in more detail in Part 2.

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