Malama, C. and Landoni, M. and Wilson, R. (2004) Fiction electronic books: a usability study. In: Eighth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL

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Fiction Electronic Books: a Usability

StudyChrysanthi Malama, Monica

Landoni & Ruth Wilson

University of Strathclyde, UKECDL - 13 September 2004

Outline

Background The Visual Book The WEB Book EBONI

Fiction Ebooks: Aims Methodology Results Analysis & Conclusions

The Visual Book

1993-1997 Importance of appearance in the design

of electronic textbooks The paper book metaphor is well-

understood

The WEB Book

What about books on the Web? Applied Morkes and Nielsen’s general

web design guidelines Scannability found to be important for

books on the Web

EBONI

Electronic Books ON-screen Interface Evaluations of:

Web textbooks Textbooks in proprietary formats (Adobe Reader,

Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket Reader) Electronic encyclopaedias Portable electronic books

By: students & lecturers in UK Higher Education

Electronic textbook design guidelines: http://ebooks.strath.ac.uk/eboni/guidelines

Fiction Ebooks: Aims

To study whether the presentation of a fiction book in electronic format that shares the EBONI project’s guidelines in terms of visual components (such as size, quality and design) increases satisfaction and usability.

To compare the results of this study with the results of the EBONI project which focused on the design of learning and teaching material on the Internet.

The Fiction Ebooks

Same book in three formats Freely available on the Internet Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures

of Gerard Scrolling book Adobe Reader (PDF) Microsoft Reader

Scrolling Book

From Project Gutenberg http://gutenberg.net/

Simple, scrolling book Everything displayed on one long page

Adobe Reader

From Nalanda Digital Library (India) http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/

PDF format Look of a physical book Single page on screen at a time

Functionality Bookmarks Find Zoom in/out Thumbnails…

Microsoft Reader

Virginia Digital Library http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/Plist.html

Greatest functionality: Bookmarks Find Pan/zoom Clear Type “Riffle Control” for navigation Alter font size Annotations: notes, highlights, drawings

Procedure

25 participants: Lecturers and postgraduates in Computer &

Information Sciences Wider public

Conducted over the Internet: Contacted by email Online instructions Online questionnaire

Procedure

Pre-questionnaire Age, gender, occupation Previous experience of ebooks

Invited to read the three versions of the book in any order

Subjective satisfaction questionnaire How easy to learn, read, navigate… Comments

Measures

Subjective satisfaction comprised: Ease of use

“Compared to what you expected, how quickly did you learn to use the ebook?”

“Was the text easy to read?” “Was the book easy to navigate?” “How frustrated did you feel?”

Quality Rate how “annoying”, “engaging”, “helpful” &

“unpleasant” each version was Rate functionalities in terms of helpfulness

Results

Ease of use

Quality Overall Satisfactio

nScrolling 6.9 5.3 6.1Adobe Ebook Reader

7.1 6.8 7

Microsoft Reader

5.8 5.8 5.8

Comments: Scrolling Ebook

Positive: Easy to download

Negative: User-unfriendly Disliked scrolling Boring font and layout Difficult to navigate

Comments: Adobe Reader

Positive: More “book-like” Attractive, clear & colourful Easy navigation

Negative: Took time to download Can’t underline

Comments: Microsoft Reader

Positive: “book-like” Functionality

“I could not believe that you could draw… make notes and highlight”

Negative: Download problems Navigation icons Software failure

Analysis

Importance of book metaphor, in particular: Tables of contents Pages Navigation Bookmarks Highlight facility

And: Customisation, e.g. font size Search tools Colour

Conclusions

To provide practical and attractive ebooks, we need to understand user expectations

Focus on appearance as well as technology

Future work: Analyse use in a library setting Allow users to choose their own books