Enhancing interactivity: how has design exploration of physically and intellectually interactive picturebooks enhanced shared reading?

Abstract

Children’s book design can have a significant impact on shared reading practices, interaction, and engagement. We hypothesise that books designed with the intention to specifically enhance the author’s story through interactivity will provide opportunities for new experience design outcomes that are both human-object and human-human centred. The multi-faceted problem of children’s books has been explored by linguistics, history, and education researchers, yet seldom using a design lens. In previous work we developed a traditional and highly interactive picturebook which we observe here being used by families. The study explored how physical and intellectual enhancements change the level and types of interaction within a shared reading environment. The inclusion of physical and intellectual enhancements within the book promote a greater level of interaction and engagement from the parent and child. However, this is only the case if the enhancements provide meaningful interaction, and have relevance to the story. Our results provide design solutions for designing effective children’s books in the future.