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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), 12-17 Sep 2004, Bath, United Kingdom.
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Fiction Electronic Books:
a Usability Study
Chrysanthi Malama, Monica Landoni
& Ruth Wilson
University of Strathclyde, UK
ECDL - 13 September 2004
Outline

Background
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The Visual Book
The WEB Book
EBONI
Fiction Ebooks:
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Aims
Methodology
Results
Analysis & Conclusions
The Visual Book
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1993-1997
Importance of appearance in the design of
electronic textbooks
The paper book metaphor is well-understood
The WEB Book
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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
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Electronic Books ON-screen Interface
Evaluations of:
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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
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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
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Same book in three formats
Freely available on the Internet
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of
Gerard
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Scrolling book
Adobe Reader (PDF)
Microsoft Reader
Scrolling Book
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From Project Gutenberg

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http://gutenberg.net/
Simple, scrolling book
Everything displayed on one long page
Adobe Reader

From Nalanda Digital Library (India)
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PDF format
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http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/
Look of a physical book
Single page on screen at a time
Functionality
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Bookmarks
Find
Zoom in/out
Thumbnails…
Microsoft Reader
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Virginia Digital Library
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http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/Plist.html
Greatest functionality:
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Bookmarks
Find
Pan/zoom
Clear Type
“Riffle Control” for navigation
Alter font size
Annotations: notes, highlights, drawings
Procedure
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25 participants:
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Lecturers and postgraduates in Computer &
Information Sciences
Wider public
Conducted over the Internet:
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Contacted by email
Online instructions
Online questionnaire
Procedure
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Pre-questionnaire
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Age, gender, occupation
Previous experience of ebooks
Invited to read the three versions of the
book in any order
Subjective satisfaction questionnaire
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How easy to learn, read, navigate…
Comments
Measures
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Subjective satisfaction comprised:
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Ease of use
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“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
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
Rate how “annoying”, “engaging”, “helpful” &
“unpleasant” each version was
Rate functionalities in terms of helpfulness
Results
Ease of use
Quality
Scrolling
6.9
5.3
Overall
Satisfaction
6.1
Adobe Ebook
Reader
Microsoft
Reader
7.1
6.8
7
5.8
5.8
5.8
Comments: Scrolling Ebook
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Positive:
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Easy to download
Negative:
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User-unfriendly
Disliked scrolling
Boring font and layout
Difficult to navigate
Comments: Adobe Reader
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Positive:
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More “book-like”
Attractive, clear & colourful
Easy navigation
Negative:
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Took time to download
Can’t underline
Comments: Microsoft Reader
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Positive:
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“book-like”
Functionality
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“I could not believe that you could draw… make notes
and highlight”
Negative:
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Download problems
Navigation icons
Software failure
Analysis
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Importance of book metaphor, in particular:
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Tables of contents
Pages
Navigation
Bookmarks
Highlight facility
And:
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Customisation, e.g. font size
Search tools
Colour
Conclusions
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To provide practical and attractive ebooks,
we need to understand user expectations
Focus on appearance as well as technology
Future work:
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
Analyse use in a library setting
Allow users to choose their own books