Secret Lives of Books

When was this book last read? How popular is it across the world? How many copies of this book exist?

Secret Lives of Books is a hybrid product, a living wall display that allows customers to choose any book from the store and celebrate and explore the millions of books physically in the world.

Hellion

Sometimes an idea becomes an obsession: “Are you composing choreography, or choreographing composition?”

Laura Kriefman and Tom Mitchell of University of the West of England joined forces to celebrate the physical book as the centrepiece of information exchange.
Transforming a quiet workspace into a beautiful interactive platform, their experience visualised the unexploited data sets of our public libraries, rewarding bookish curiosity with unexpected connections.

A Problem

Books have been the central unit of knowledge transmission for the last 1500 years, yet booksellers have noticed a dramatic drop off in clientele.

A Solution

In January 2012, after three months R&D, a working concept prototype of a retail book market media exploration and commerce engine was on offer, The Secret Lives of Books.

Hellion straddles the worlds of music, dance and tech.

From Tokyo to San Francisco, Hellion has transported audiences with each percussive step - immersing them into a delightful and colourful live performance. Hellion is a hybrid, super-human, instrumental and vocal performance for those who like a splash of sublime magic with their technology and live music. Come and step into the world of Hellion - a high-octane, live dialogue between light, sound, movement and technology.

Waterstones vs Amazon

The Problem

Bookstores face a major crisis: Amazon’s prices, search engine & customer optimised recommendations dominate the book retail market. Waterstones needs to increase the transactional value of an in-store purchase. Traditional approaches include upselling and cross-selling titles at live events. Behavioural economists have proved that the “Endowment Effect” (holding an item in your hands), makes you more likely to purchase. It creates an emotional connection to the item of perceived ownership that encourages impulse purchasing. [Suzanne Shu, Marketing Professor, UCLA]

The Demand

Bookstores need to create a unique selling experience to draw new and returning customers. They need to encourage sales and find a different angle on the publishing market to survive Amazon. As the effect of selling coffee as an upselling device diminishes, new tactics need to be found that value the customer, value books, increase purchases, create return engagement & engage across generations. People need to be encouraged to explore books in a new way: being able to pick up any book in store & find out not only further information about it, but discover new books encourages exploration of the building & the shop catalogue.

The Competition

Amazon is any bookstores biggest competitor. A bookstores forte is its physical presence and a real-life device for interacting with book metadata gives you an immersive experience that increasing the engagement with the product, and customer relationship with the store. At a top level this is a system that allows you to move an object, generate visuals, sound & manipulate metadata. There are no direct competitors in this market, and we have already been approached directly by Buro Happold, The Library of Birmingham, Blackwell’s, The Eden Project and The Imperial War Museum North.

An Augmented Reality Platform

Secret Lives of Books is an augmented reality platform that allows customers to navigate large & complex metadata to discover & buy more books. Using interactive visuals & an advanced IMU embedded in a physical object, the user participates in a immersive exploration that responds to instinctive gestures & behaviours, creating a satisfying, real time exploration of different books. As you explore the visuals you access portals to media sources such as audio recordings, publication information, purchasing options or library holdings.

Store Customisation

Utilising a mix of universal data & store specific metadata we can create a unique locative level to the experience, which still honours some booksellers preference to allow individual store staff to shape recommendations & seasonal collections. Secret Lives of Books and its app can be skinned with brand identities and integrated with their webselling platforms. Libraries are expected to be an important additional market.

This project celebrates the secrets lives of books, inspiring exploration of a new connected world of favourite titles waiting to be discovered. An integrated point of sale installation including a wall sized screen, novel yet familiar high tech navigation device and curated trails combine to form a unique experience that can only be full appreciated in a physical store and companion app and help challenge lesser online only experiences.

Secret Lives of Books brought together four technologists with an extensive track record of groundbreaking practice. Specialising in public engagement, the project was featured at the London Olympics, Barbican, South Bank Centre, National Theatre, V&A and TED Global 2011 & 2012.

Secret Lives of Books team:
Laura Kriefman
Tim Mitchell
Phil Tew
Seb Madgwick

Project development was made possible by: REACT Knowledge Exchange Funding, AHRC, The University of the West of England and the Pervasive Media Studio.