Here\u2019s how the little-known skill of “active reading” can teach you how great products get built \u2013 and ultimately how to be a better designer.<\/p>\n
Reading and writing have been around for millennia, but it took the invention of the printing press for literacy to become widespread. Similarly, we have had computers for decades now, but it took the arrival of the smartphone to accelerate our collective digital literacy. <\/p>\n
However, while the vast majority of the world can read, just as billions of us use smartphones, very few of us know how to deeply interrogate what we read. Rather than passively consuming the words on a page, or merely figuring out how to use an app, a deeper level of reading exists. You might consider it the difference between reading and reading into something: consciously engaging and questioning and asking \u201cwhy?\u201d. <\/p>\n
This more inquisitive approach requires more effort. It needs to be consciously developed and maintained. But the mental framework extends beyond reading – the deeper appreciation for how great designers build their products will in turn inform your own design work. After you\u2019ve learned how to do it, you\u2019ll have a new superpower.<\/p>\n
How do we develop this deep form of reading? Luckily for us, someone else already figured it out. And they wrote a book about it.<\/p>\n
In 1972 Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (trivia: the Quiz Show guy!<\/a>) released a book with the very meta title of How to Read a Book<\/em><\/a>. A heavily revised version of Adler\u2019s 1940 book of the same name, it outlines four categories of what they called active reading.<\/p>\n What can you learn by not just using, but analyzing, those products?<\/p>\n Briefly, the four types:<\/p>\n 1 Elementary.<\/strong> This is the fundamental basis of reading, what you learned to do in school. What do the words on the page say and mean?<\/p>\n 2 Inspectional.<\/strong> This type of reading is a skill in itself, and should give you enough information to form a basic judgment of the text. It involves skim reading, browsing the table of contents, flipping through some random pages, breezing through the intro and conclusion.<\/p>\n 3 Analytical.<\/strong> A slow and thoughtful reading of the text, or even multiple reads. By taking notes, asking questions, attempting to summarise it, you really digest where the author is coming from and how he or she is attempting to convey ideas and emotions through structure, tone, style, repetition and form.<\/p>\n 4 Syntopical.<\/strong> The highest level of reading involves a comparative analysis of a book with others on the same topic. Attempt to cross-pollinate ideas and make connections beyond what\u2019s presented within any single text.<\/p>\n Presented like this, it becomes clear that most of us move between Elementary and Analytical reading. Which is perfectly fine \u2013 books are generally intended to be enjoyed, not labored over.<\/p>\n But if you were a writer, you would probably want to verge into the other types of reading. You\u2019d want to learn how you yourself might become a better writer through studying other texts.<\/p>\n