Digitization of actions: A semantic analysis of the e-reader by its physical and digital attributes

Digital technologies and electronic products have become irreplaceable elements of the daily life regarding any area, and are continuing to expand by being incorporated with systems that seemed to be unrelated. The incorporation of digital technologies could be said to be re-shaping the action and the perception of the action or area it is related to by changing expectations and re-defining the experiences. Answering the changing expectations and playing a role in defining the new experiences could be said to be the focus of industrial design, however the way digital devices are designed and constructed could be argued to be different than the analogue products. The product-user interaction is in a material way in analogue products, whereas digital devices could be said to be gateways to the immaterial aspect of the product and most of the interaction occurs there. It could be said the action itself is digitized, however the device still needs a material body which is a subject of industrial design. As a digital device that changes the perception and expectations of the action, the e-reader is focused upon as a product that "digitizes an action", and it is explored what the significance of the materiality of an e-reader might be, and what aspects of such a product might indicate for their users from the perspective of Product Semantics. The aim of the study is to determine what aspects of an e-reader as a digital device are significant to the individuals and what meanings are given to a product that digitizes an analogue experience. In the thesis, a framework providing an "anatomy" illustrating the interactional layers of a digital device is proposed and the e-reader analysed over this framework, for determining the possibly significant elements of the product. Then, evaluations and perceptions of the e-reader by individuals of various familiarty level with the product is collected with a three level survey, interview and observation study, involving users that own an e-reader, individuals that have not used an e-reader before and potential users considering to purchase an e-reader. Elements that affect the meanings and values given to the device at each stage are assessed and the roles of the elements in the creation of these meaning are discussed to provide an insight into each element's significance, including the materiality aspect.