The main purpose of this in-depth activity is for you to consider how a digital artifact has been designed based on the same conceptual model of an equivalent physical artifact. Paperback books are designed on a conceptual model of reading by turning a set of physical pages that are stitched together and supported by a spine. Bookmarks, or other artifacts, like paper tickets, receipts or a piece of paper are used to indicate where the reader has read up to when closing the book and then returning to it. The book also has a table of contents and sometimes an index of keywords at the back. The front and back covers are designed using thicker card to protect the inner pages but also are used for marketing the book, often having a distinctive visual design that ‘sells’ the book and provides information about the author and what the book is about. This can help them stand out on a bookshelf and be easily recognized. All of these physical attributes contribute towards the legibility, memorability and ease of use of reading from paper. ebooks are based on the metaphor of a printed paperback but with additional functionality. The conceptual model is to provide a means of reading text from pages and to be able to move from page to page. Another similarity is that ebooks are presented via a physical device (e.g. a Kindle) that is about the same size as a paperback. The look of the page is often similar to that of a paperback book - black text appearing on a white screen. However, there are many differences to how an ebook is read and used. Pages are turned by pressing a button on the side. An ebook is downloaded from an online store as a file and stored on one device. The size of the text appearing on the screen can be increased and the brightness of the page can be adapted to suit the reader. There are also additional navigation functions that show how many pages have been read and how much of the book is left to be read. One of the disadvantages of losing the physicality of the paperback book is it does not have the same aesthetic appeal when reading it. While the digital cover can appear the same on a screen it is less easy to pick it out from others that are stored on the ereader. Also, they cannot be flicked through or browsed in the way people do when picking up a physical paperback book.

Paper-based maps are designed as visual representations of a geographical area, such as a city, that are intended to help people find places and plan a route and navigate their way to an unfamiliar destination. They are usually based on a conceptual model of a 2D bird’s eye view of the physical world that the user looks down on. Features of the environment are coded using schematic and concrete mappings (e.g. blue lines for a river, a dashed line for a railway track) that show relationships between the geographical elements (e.g. where roads intersect). They require map reading skills – knowing how to locate yourself relative to the physical world and how to plan a route. Physical maps are fixed and use canonical signs and symbols to represent objects. There are a number of different kinds of smartphone maps, providing different views, such as 2D or 3D, schematic or realistic. An icon of where the user is and which direction is presented as a dot or an icon of a person. It can be zoomed in and out of. The user can type on where they want to go to and a dotted line will be presented for different kinds of routes (e.g. walking, cycling, going by car or public transport). The underlying conceptual model used is similar to that used for a physical map but also acts as a cognitive aid which can guide and show the user where to go. Smartphone maps do not require the same kind of map reading skills as are needed for paper maps; the use needs to simply follow the dots or line to get to their destination.