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 2004), Sep 2004, Bath, United Kingdom. This is an author-produced version of a presentation at ECDL This version has been peer-reviewed, but does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout, or pagination. Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in Strathprints to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the url ( of the Strathprints website. Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to The Strathprints Administrator:

Fiction Electronic Books: a Usability Study Chrysanthi Malama, Monica Landoni & Ruth Wilson University of Strathclyde, UK ECDL - 13 September 2004

Outline Background  The Visual Book  The WEB Book  EBONI Fiction Ebooks:  Aims  Methodology  Results  Analysis & Conclusions

The Visual Book 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: 

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  Simple, scrolling book Everything displayed on one long page

Adobe Reader From Nalanda Digital Library (India)  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  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  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 useQualityOverall Satisfaction Scrolling Adobe Ebook Reader Microsoft Reader 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