Built a walkable 3D library of 200 public domain books | Hacker News Reader

Built a walkable 3D library of 200 public domain books

libraryafterdark.space

Bravo! I would actually want a library-sized version of this. Discoverability of books through catalogues, particularly commercial sites like Amazon, is crappy; it presents books it thinks you should buy in response to a text query. Being able to browse through a section of books in Dewey or LCC ordering like this and being able take a peek at its cover would be immensely better for discovery.

Thanks , yeah I think it has that nice sense of discoveru and exploration you just don't get from a catalogue

A very interesting idea, which eliminates the rigid feeling of the directory

Thanks!

cute but very poor usability that gets in the way of exploration.

skeuomorphism for interaction systems is usually not the way. useful for communicating key metaphor, but not for overall navigation.

Thanks for the commeny! Agreed, usability needs a lot of improvement - could you recommend a tool which would help design a better navigation system?

The root problem is fundamental: you're trying to recreate a physical experience in a virtual world.

More rigorous would be deconstructing the inherent constraints of the problem space as well as deconstructing the goals the system should have: is it to discover interesting books? Is it to facilitate research? Is it to enable seeing connections across genres or languages, etc. Those things, and the tradeoffs they bring, should drive your information architecture, navigation, and representation.

Great user experience is more about interaction design (that's effective for the problem to be solve) than visual design. The interaction should be molded to the problem space, rather than the other way round.

More bluntly: the 3D walk around the library is cute, but doesn't serve a purpose (as far as I can tell).

Thanks for that..I suppose the fundamental goal is to allow for serendipity, stumbling across something you'd never search for but grabs your interest when you see it

good! so the thing to think about is how do you incentivize serendipity in a way that gives a payoff. it also helps having a mental model of who the user might be.

there's probably some psychology at play worth considering too.

Cool, food for thought indeed :-)

you're welcome! fun stuff! good luck!

Added some new QOL features and content!

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