The NUE UX difference from the traditional book binding
It occurred to me one day that the book experience was ridiculous. Billions of books have been made. Billions of people across the planet use them. 365 days/year. And tens of thousands of craftsmen have worked on them. For 2000 years.
So:
- I took a fresh look at the design. (I'm not a book designer so that part was easy ;)
- I focused solely on what we want:
- Comfortable to hold
- Easy to use
- Easy to carry, store, and handle
- Durable.
So I asked myself, "What would be ideal?"
Then I imagined it would be ideal if all the pages of a book could be held by, and rotate around, a single imaginary axis. ... I pictured a wheel, and its spokes.
Then I thought about the binding not as a 2D plane but as a 3D volume, and ... BING!
I realized that I could stagger the pages’ connections throughout the 3D binding volume ...
... and get all the pages to at least point to the imaginary axis! ...
And that would likely allow the book to wrap around and be easy to read, and comfortable to hold, with one hand. And comfortable to write in.
Then I thought, “Hmmm, ... that is exciting." And I went home and started doing patent research and making prototypes.
The NUE UX book spine patent
NUE UX Patents are now pending in many countries.
Sharing the prototypes with industry folk made it clear that this was a novel invention that could change book binding. Researching patents also made it clear that no one had patented a method like the NUE UX spine.(Let me say that I fully appreciate that the audio book and the ebook are far more radical changes to the "book" form and experience. So my comparisons are limited to other forms of paper books, which are maintaining a steady 75-80% of books sold.)
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Originally on Kickstarter.