<aside> 📌 Utilizing NYT API and OpenLibrary API, “Judge a Book by its Covers” is a virtual library that leverages the descriptive quality of book covers to facilitate a holistic exploration of two hundred New York Times Bestsellers.

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Project Team: Malika Khurana, Elysha Tsai, Ricky Chen

Advisor: Kyuha Shim, 51-367 Computational Design Thinking

Check out our website live here.

Concept

Given the challenge to utilize a New York Times API to build a data visualization, we decided to focus on the breadth and depth of information the database had to offer about books. After ruminating on a few basic concepts, we established a focus on the very aspect of the book that draws a reader in—the cover.

How can we organize book covers to facilitate a unique book-browsing experience? We believed that seeing a singular title’s multiple covers effectively creates a moodboard for the book, establishing a sense of the story’s subjects and atmosphere in a second. Looking across many books, patterns start to emerge in cover artwork: over time, by publishing house, by genre, etc. This is where we found value in crafting a tool to encourage readers to trust their visual intuition and judge a book by its cover.

Variety of covers of The Great Gatsby presented by differing foci on subject, character, environment.

Here were a few of our guiding questions through the development of our project from concept to completion:

• What information is useful for readers to know before choosing a book to read?
• How do we take organizational and visual inspiration from libraries?
• How do we facilitate continuous book-browsing? How do we inspire curiosity in the process while being informative?
• What information is needed for readers to decide whether or not they want to read a book?
• How will we include readers of all experience levels to enjoy the book-browsing process?

Process

Inspiration

We found a great source of inspiration in libraries: taking cues from both real and imaginary library architecture for our layout concepts, and experimenting with ladders and bookshelves to structure content and add visual interest. As we grew more interested in representing book covers through their color palettes, we also referenced the archived flash website of designer Kashiwa Sato.

• Libraries as inspiration - architecture as organization (levels of a building), Library of Babel, spatial layout, visual breakpoints like ladders + shelves

Initial Wireframes

Digital libraries typically display books with images of front covers. We were really inspired by organizational structures in libraries and other data vis references, so our design process started off with rough sketches and rough wireframes.

Some ideas we explored: showing different perspective views of a shelf, the library simplified into a cube structure, showing only the spines, communicating hierarchy and order of books with a ladder or staircase, showing both the spines and front cover of books.