The Story
We begin with this story from Storycorps, about a father, his daughter, and a New York public librarian. Abigail Jean, the daughter, had just begun her journey of reading, and Hasina Islam, the librarian, kindly offered her book recommendations. Abigail, as she proudly toted, read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory way before her father thought she could. The bond between librarian and child stayed steadfast, so much so that five years later in 2021, Hasina and Abigail recorded a followup where Abigail mentioned how much she missed the librarian and the library.
Initial Brainstorming
From listening to the story, I came up with a few themes to guide my experience with:
Theme 1: Self-Pride
Abigail: But I can read it. Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory you thought was too much for me and I read three chapters of it.
Abigail proudly expressed to her dad that she was able to read a book much more advanced than he believed she could. This pride in her own abilities, driven largely by herself with motivation from her librarian, was an emotion I felt was worth capturing.
Theme 2: Sanctuary
Hasina: Do you miss the library?
Abigail: I do. I miss just having the infinite wall of books.
Hasina: …the library can be a sanctuary for you, a place that has millions of books waiting for you to go on a new adventure.
Both Hasina and Abigail expressed a sense of ownership and content about the library, especially seeing it as a special place, or sanctuary, for both of them. Elevating the status of the library from something we take for granted into something we appreciate and are at one with was the second focus.
Theme 3: Mentorship and Bonding
Rich: OK, you see what you started? You see that spark that you put in this child?
Here, Rich is describing the relationship between Hasina and Abigail, specifically how Hasina has inspired Abigail to love reading through her book recommendations. Their precious bond is the third focus I was hoping to convey with a spatial experience.
Inner Sanctuary:
My first set of ideas focused on using the center of the space as the main area to spend time in, with the outer space being the entrance to the smaller space. In the small space, you’d climb up about 5 feet (halfway to the ceiling) and spend as long as you’d like reading in the center. The environment would slowly light up around you as you stayed longer, signifying accomplishment and fondness with the space (representing a library).
I tried sitting about 5 feet up to visualize what that might feel like:
Daphne’s feedback was as follows:
The concept might be confusing to a visitor: do they know they’re supposed to reach the center? What is the rest of the space being used for, other than a transition into the middle? What determines the length and end of the experience, other than the visitor getting bored and going back out? What about everyone else waiting to use that space?
Additionally, focus more on the interaction than the aesthetic elements. There should be a stronger interaction before starting on making the space look good.
First Pivot
It was clear from the first round of feedback that the experience was too vague. A visitor likely would be confused upon entering, be unsure of the activity they were to do in the outer space, and have no exit experience after they spent an undefined amount of time in the inner “sanctuary”.
Talking to some of my classmates, they suggested that this experience might work better with several inner sanctuaries, introducing the idea of interacting with other visitors in the exhibit. In our discussions, someone brought up a feature of some bookstores: the “blind date” section, where every book in the section is gift-wrapped and phrases describing who the book might appeal to is written on top:
The blind date idea struck me because it was a form of indirect interaction with another person. Someone had to wrap and write a recommendation for the book, which would influence the eventual reader’s decision to pick the book up. I decided to work a version of this idea into my space.
In addition to the blind date idea, I decided to set a purpose for the exhibit: to encourage former readers to pick up books regularly again.
This would be in the form of multiple sanctuary spaces. To start off, viewers would fill out a survey on the wall that asked about their reading habits both in the past and present. Based on their responses, the space would direct them to one of the spaces. Each viewer would experience books in different formats, such as having a quiet and comfortable environment, listening to audiobooks, and reading ebooks on a Kindle or Kindle-like device.
Continuing to ideate on having multiple sanctuary spaces, I looked online for existing spaces that brought people together to read books. Reading nooks seemed promising as a space one could retreat comfortably to pick up a book and stay indefinitely.
Additionally, the Library of Muyinga features multiple forms of reading nooks and more opportunities to interact, such as bookshelves that doubled as benches and a communal net to lie down on while reading. Though I used this space’s layout as inspiration for the furniture, there was definitely something to be said about physically bringing together everyone in the space, which the multiple sanctuary idea didn’t have a clear vision of.
The walls would be filled with various comfortable or novel furnitures to read from, such as hammocks and round nooks, while there would be one bookshelf in the middle. This bookshelf would be an array of cubbies with chalkboard doors, opening to reveal one book per cubby. The idea was similar to the blind date bookstore model in that the previous reader would write on the chalkboard after they put a book away, indirectly interacting with the next person to pick that book up.
I also used a physical scale model to figure out the layouts of reading nooks and space each unity of furniture needed.
This time around, I didn’t get as much constructive criticism as before, and both my professor and classmates felt this was a stronger idea. However, I still worried that the overall experience felt hollow, like a glorified library that added nothing to what a library already had to offer. The interaction I was trying to push onto visitors needed less distance; changing from indirect to direct interaction and, as before, adding more structure to the experience.
Second Pivot
Up to now, sanctuary had been the driving theme behind my ideas, but I felt like mentorship and interaction between visitors should be emphasized much more. Also, I became inspired by Teamlab exhibits and interactive Van Gogh exhibits and the way they use projectors to transform a simple room into beautiful visual complexity.
I decided to change my experience to strictly two people at a time, no more, no less. Both visitors would:
- Enter a room where they would discuss how reading has been or not been a part of their lives, and reflect upon reasons why that might be.
- Be prompted into a second room that would narrate a passage about what “sanctuary” means, inspiring them to create in the third and final set of rooms.
- Based on what each visitor learned about the other, they would decorate a room into an ideal reading space for the other. This could include furniture, decorations, scents, and sounds, as well as a selection of books curated by the other person.
- Each visitor could spend as long as they wanted in the sanctuary that the other created for them. They wouldn’t have to read in this space but it would be not-so-subtly recommended.
This experience was much more solid than anything that came before it. My professor and classmates loved the idea of visitors in the exhibit directly interacting with one another and doing things (transforming a space) for each other. Additionally, the use of round rooms as sanctuary spaces was seen as natural and immersive versus keeping those spaces rectangular.
However, this experience left a few things unclear. What would end the experience for a visitor? If one person wanted to stay for hours to read, then wouldn’t the exhibit be locked down until they finally exited? Are two rooms as introductions to the main experience of the round rooms really necessary? Would a flashy sanctuary space be more distracting than enticing to read in? And finally, with two random people, how can you guarantee a strong bond by the end of an experience, one that reflects the power between librarian and child?
Final Experience Changes
The problem lay in my target audience for this experience: two random people. Of course they wouldn’t have much of an incentive to form a strong bond beyond what is necessary to finish going through the experience. However, what about replacing two people with parents and children?
With that small change, the uncertainties in my last proposed interaction were suddenly cleared up. With the target goal of getting 5 to 7 year old children to read and mostly including parents to help their kids feel safe and confident in the space, the experience could feature only short children’s books. Additionally, there is already a strong bond between most parents and their children, rather than two random people. This experience would not have to create a bond from scratch, but just strengthen and utilize it. There wouldn’t need to be two staging rooms to prime families into the experience: just one big reading room.
To top it off, the round room experience was tweaked as well to ensure that time spent in them would be limited but adequate without holding up other families who wanted to try them. With the presence of a parent, their child would not be scared or confused as to how to interact with the round rooms.
As for the exit experience, the reading room was tweaked to allow more than two families to read comfortably at the same time. As two families experienced the round rooms at the same time, they could choose whether to repeat the experience or exit the space. However, the round rooms would not be contingent on having both of the same families prompt it to start. If one family loved the experience but another didn’t, then a new family could try for the first time without disrupting the experience of a family interested in repeating.
Final Experience
The final interaction goes as follows:
Two families (ideally, one kid and one parent each) enter the space into a reading room. The reading room contains a handful of children’s books separated by author. All are meant for children as young as five and will not be longer than 10 minutes to read and filled with illustrations.
The families will read in a corner of the reading room. Through sitting together, they will hopefully become comfortable around each other and even start bonding over experiences of books.
Once both families find a book their children and parents love, they will place the books in a display case, opening up both round rooms.
Each round room will have two smart pens and the walls will be projected with activities the parent and child can fill out together. They will mostly be illustration related, such as coloring in or drawing characters in the book. The room can track the kid and parent’s pens through triangulation sensors and pull up a color palette or other tools needed on screen to finish the activity closest to them.
Once both families have finished both activities, the rooms will prompt each family to swap over to the other room to see the results of the other family’s work.
Instead of looking at a room filled with finished drawings, an interactive eBook of the family’s chosen book will play, where all the illustrations are animated and sound effects are added to make the book entertaining for the child. For each character or object that the family drew, their drawing would replace the original illustration, adding a sense of ownership to the work they’ve created.
Upon exiting the round room, the parent will be automatically handed a printed sheet containing a QR code to the eBook they and their kids created, a list of nearby libraries, tips to encourage their child to continue to read, and pictures of all their creations to inspire parent and child to create their own stories.
At this point, either family can choose to exit the space or pick another book and personalize it. The experience only cares if two families are willing to start, so families can keep experiencing different books if they love the experience, or exit and give their place to a waiting family in the reading room if they didn’t really enjoy it.
Creation of Final Experience
For the digital model of the space, I created the shell in Sketchup. However, as I wanted to experiment with higher-fidelity renders and wrapping video around the round walls, I pulled the model into Blender for the finishing touches.
The static shots of the round wall room were created in Photoshop. I used Dr. Seuss as my example author and sourced most of the illustrations from his works. Some of the background illustrations were done by me but in his style.
The video mockup of an interactive ebook was actually straightforward to make. As it turns out, an animated ebook with sound effects already exists as an app.
Creating the video mockup was simply taking a snippet of the ebook, masking out the original characters in After Effects, and replacing them with childlike illustrations, adding back in similar movements as the original ebook. The final edited video was brought into Blender in order to wrap the video around the round walls and make it come to life in the space.
Reflection
Creating a meaningful spatial experience inspired by the story of Abigail and Hasina proved to be challenging but rewarding. For much of the project’s timeline, I felt like my experience ideas were weak from a lack of direction and interactions between visitors. However, I took the weaknesses of my previous ideas in mind, and with small tweaks such as catering my experience to young children, turned it into a spark to set them on a path of reading.
If there’s two things I’ll take away from the project:
- Focus on the bigger interaction first, and cut out nuances like interior decorations or technologies used. At the end of the day, humans are going into these experiences, so it is important to take a step back and analyze your work from a visceral, human point of view.
- Know your audience. Experiences can be transformed for better or worse by restricting or expanding the audience. While limiting a space to a very specific demographic isn’t always the best direction, catering towards that demographic can help focus an experience, especially when thinking about what makes that target group worth it to focus on.
