From the Visual book to the WEB book: the importance of design

This paper presents the results of two studies into electronic book production. The Visual book study explored the importance of the visual component of the book metaphor for the production of more effective electronic books, while the WEB book study took the findings of the Visual book and applied them to the production of books for publication on the World Wide Web (WWW). Both studies started from an assessment of which kinds of paper book are more suitable for translation into electronic form. Both also identified publications which are meant to be used for reference rather than those which are read sequentially, and usually in their entirety. This group includes scientific publications and textbooks which were both used as the target group for the Visual book and the WEB book experiments. In this paper we discuss the results of the two studies and how they could influence the design and production of more effective electronic books.