Holo Reader

How might we prototype a bridge between the reading experiences of paper books and their digital version?

Background

The divide between digital and physical reading presents a fundamental design challenge. While digital platforms offer powerful features like instant lookups and synchronized annotations, print books provide irreplaceable tactile feedback and reduced eye strain. This creates a "format tension" where readers face a constant trade-off:

This tension creates an opportunity for innovation at the intersection of physical and digital reading experiences.

Design Process

Design Constraints & Exploration

Before exploring solutions, we mapped out the design space through existing products and key constraints:

Existing Solutions

Several products have attempted to bridge this gap with different approaches:

A progressive OCR text scanner for print books, featuring vocabulary look-up and excerpt extraction. While useful for basic tasks, it requires constant switching between devices.

A real-time text scanner focusing on handwriting digitization. While it offers good connectivity, it primarily serves note-taking rather than enhancing the reading experience itself.

Analysis of these solutions revealed a key insight:

The limited options for interfaces and lack of seamless connectivity are the main barriers to bridging physical and digital reading.

AR Solution

With access to Microsoft Hololens, we saw an opportunity to transcend these limitations through augmented reality:

A mixed reality headset that enables digital overlay on physical objects, offering new possibilities for interaction design.

We developed two core interactions to create a seamless hybrid reading experience:

1. AR Quick Look-Up

By overlaying information directly on the book's pages, we eliminated the need to switch between devices. Users can simply tap any word to instantly see its definition, maintaining their reading flow.

Holo Reader: AR Quick Look-Up

2. Cross-Platform Annotation Syncing

Handwritten annotations are automatically digitized and synced across devices, bridging the gap between physical and digital note-taking.

Holo Reader: Annotation Syncing

Technical Implementation

Holo Reader: Development Process

System Architecture

Holo Reader: System Architecture

Key Technical Features

Demo

Reflection

This prototype revealed broader implications for AR interfaces in bridging physical-digital experiences. The technical challenges we encountered - particularly in gesture recognition and maintaining low latency - provided valuable insights into designing hybrid experiences that enhance rather than replace physical interactions.

Key learnings:

For technical details and implementation code, visit our Github Repo.