Optimal line length for reading schoolbook on screen

Although experimental studies have shown a strong impact of text layout on the legibility of e- text, many digital texts appearing in eBook or the internet use different designs, so that there is no straightforward answer in the literature over which one to follow when designing e- material. Therefore, in this paper we shall focus on the text layout, particularly the influence of line lengthen reading performance of e-school book.48 native Arabic students (24 male and 24 female) volunteered for this experiment. The participants’ age ranged from 9 to 13. Performance of students was assessed through two dependent variables: (1) time to complete each tasks; and (2) accuracy of the answers. Accuracy data was based on the number of correct answers the students provided and the total score was 12 points. Several findings were reported by this experiment such as; the time needed to complete all the question models becomes significantly low when students are older, errors for all the question models are expected to be significantly lower for older students. Reading text on a single column with double columns shows that the reading process is affected by the students’ age, as older students were faster when reading through double columns, while students aged 9 prefer the single column in both reading processes. The study has recommended double line for fast reading for students their reading performance is satisfactory. While, long line has suggested for students with difficulty in reading

Scrolling vs Paging: Reading Performance and Preference of Reading Modes in Long-form Online News

This study explores the impact of scrolling and dynamic pagination in long-form online documents on reader performance and reader experience. Previous research has produced mixed results, indicating no difference between modes, or a positive effect favouring scrolling. Recent advances in web standards have enabled simpler, dynamic, performant methods of pagination to tailor content responsively to any screen, meriting renewed study in this area. This paper uses one such method to load subsequent online news pages instantly without buffering. In an online browser experiment with 38 participants, an increase in reading speed in the scrolling mode was found at a level of significance. This follows previous research which has suggested that while a scrolling presentation style exacts extra demands on working memory capacity (WMC), many current web users have developed compensatory strategies and cognitive flexibility for navigating scrolling web documents

Evaluating advanced search interfaces using established information-seeking model

When users have poorly defined or complex goals search interfaces offering only keyword searching facilities provide inadequate support to help them reach their information-seeking objectives. The emergence of interfaces with more advanced capabilities such as faceted browsing and result clustering can go some way to some way toward addressing such problems. The evaluation of these interfaces, however, is challenging since they generally offer diverse and versatile search environments that introduce overwhelming amounts of independent variables to user studies; choosing the interface object as the only independent variable in a study would reveal very little about why one design out-performs another. Nonetheless if we could effectively compare these interfaces we would have a way to determine which was best for a given scenario and begin to learn why. In this article we present a formative framework for the evaluation of advanced search interfaces through the quantification of the strengths and weaknesses of the interfaces in supporting user tactics and varying user conditions. This framework combines established models of users, user needs, and user behaviours to achieve this. The framework is applied to evaluate three search interfaces and demonstrates the potential value of this approach to interactive IR evaluation

Eye Tracking Analysis in Reading Online Newspapers

Reading online newspapers is increasingly becoming more common, so that thousands of newspapers are published online today. Despite this development, there are many unanswered questions concerning subjects’ behaviour during reading an online newspapers. Recording eye movements when a subject is navigating within a news website can provide quantitative and objective information on subject’s behaviour and combined with other methodologies – usability testing, focus groups, log analysis - represents a powerful tool for improving news websites functionality, and by consequence their achievement among readers. Two Italian newspaper websites have been considered for the study described in this paper and the analysis has been focused on the exploration behaviour within the newspaper home page and the reading of article pages

Collaborative Process Modelling with Multi-Touch Tables

In business process modelling, as in any application domain, collaborative work gets more and more important as the complexity of the problem increases. Conventional computing workspaces, (e.g. desktop PC, laptop) are not suitable for active collaboration of several contributors on the same device at the same time. In this thesis we develop collabView, a proof-of-concept implementation, to model business processes on a multitouch table such that multiple users can interact at the same time. Our application connects as a client to the proView business process modelling server application. collabView encourages all collaborators to work actively together and interact with the process models in a direct an intuitive way

The Development of Practical Guidelines for Designing Online Questionnaires

Questionnaires are an inexpensive way to gather data from a potentially large number of respondents. However, it is a long and effort consuming process to conduct the survey manually. As the popularity of the Internet increases, online survey creation software allows an access to individuals in distant locations, the ability to reach difficult to contact participants, and the convenience of having automated data collection, which reduces researcher time and effort. The aim of this study is to develop an Online Questionnaire Builder (OQB), which is an online survey software package to streamline and simplify the entire survey process from design of the questionnaire to the presentation of the results. OQB consists of an intuitive wizard interface for creating surveys, tools for distributing the surveys and analyzing the results. This paper presents the results of our preliminary study. By studying wide numbers of existing surveys, we came up with practical guidelines that should be met before a questionnaire can be considered a sound research tool. The guidelines presented in terms of structure, layout, navigation, formatting, response format and question types. It is expected, with the specified guidelines, OQB will be a useful and automated online application for creating and distributing surveys for the use of researchers or any scholars

Analyzing the Egyptian News Websites' Layout According to Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web design is a new concept in the world of web design that serves a successful user experience. It is also a concept that develops continuously to cover many aspects. Egyptian News Websites have been tried to keep pace with the increasing use of small screens and smartphones in browsing websites through the development of elements' distribution patterns for interfaces' design. In this study, it was checked the use of RWD of Egyptian news websites as well as It was tested the most six popular news websites in Egypt. The objectives of the current study were to analyze the presence of responsive web design on the Egyptian daily news websites by checking the elements distribution patterns of purposive sample of these websites interfaces on different display screens, and to evaluate the usability of these sites through responsive web design and users feedback. So, a descriptive design was utilize intended to provide a complete picture about that, which was carried out on two levels (User interface analytical study and survey study of the user's opinions). The study results revealed that the majority of users prefer to browse the news websites through the small screens "smart phones on different sizes". And that the users up tell now didn’t able to recognize the importance of the Responsive Web Design because most of their dealings with screens were limited in one type. Accordingly, the study was recommended that the design of the Egyptian newspapers should be reviewed in order to comply with all responsive web standards and even be able to realize the new concepts of "Adaptive design" which focuses on the user not the browser. Keywords: Responsive Web Design (RWD), Egyptian’s News Websites, User Interface (UI), Laptop, Tablets & smart phones

Testing the impact of overt and covert ordering interventions on sustainable consumption choices: a randomised controlled trial

Food products have significant impacts on the environment over their life cycle. We investigated whether displaying products in ascending order of carbon footprint in an online supermarket environment can shift consumer choices towards more sustainable options. We examined whether the effect of the ordering intervention differs when the ordering is overt (information about the ordering is explicit), compared to when it is covert (participants not told about the ordering). We conducted a three-arm parallel-group randomised trial using 1842 online participants from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Participants shopped for a meal, choosing one product from each of six product categories in a simulated online supermarket. Six products were listed vertically on each product-category page. Products were randomly ordered for the control arm but ordered by carbon footprint in the covert and overt ordering arms. In the overt ordering arm, a statement was displayed at the top of each product page about the ordering of products. The primary outcome was whether one of the three most sustainable products was chosen in each product category. There was no effect of the covert ordering on the probability of choosing more sustainable products compared with the control arm (OR = 0.97, 95% CI 0.88-1.07, p = 0.533). Furthermore, we did not find evidence that the effects of the covert ordering and overt ordering differed (p = 0.594). Within the control condition, products in different positions were chosen with similar frequencies, suggesting that product positioning does not have an impact on choices. This may explain why re-ordering products had no effect. In the overt condition, only 19.5% of people correctly answered that the products were ordered according to sustainability in a follow-up question, suggesting that they didn't notice the statement. Results suggest that choices for grocery products might be too ingrained to be changed by subtle rearrangements of choice architecture like the ordering interventions, and highlight the difficulty of conveying information effectively to consumers in the online grocery shopping environment