Speeder Reader
Speeder Reader couples the notion of dynamic typography with the notion of the car as interface. A speed-reading protocol called RSVP (for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) allows people to learn to read up to 2000 words per minute. This is because it flashes words or short phrases onto the screen in front of you, affixed in one spot; you don't have to move your eyes around a page to read.
Speeder Reader gives you a gas pedal to control your rate of speed-reading and a steering wheel to navigate between streams of text. You can also jump forward or backwards in the text (by sentence, paragraph, or chapter).
In Western culture, the act of driving is very personally empowering (just like reading!). By combining the driving interface with dynamic text, we're offering a model of reading as a medium that gets you places.
Here's a preprint of the Computers and Graphics journal paper that goes into more detail on the design and technology behind Speeder Reader.
SPEEDER READER credits
Maribeth Back, Jonathan Cohen, Rich Gold
Driving through a book: Speeder Reader used a video-game driving interface with dynamic text.
Speeder Reader's storyline was a science fiction travelogue called "Podkayne's Tour of the Inhabited Planets."
Copyright The Reading Lab 2005. Last updated March 20, 2005. Comments welcome.