screen size and you

Screen Size and You

Laszlo RendasUser Experience (UX) Research and Design

Graduate Student at Missouri Western State University

LaszloRendas.com @Laszlo_Rendas

[email protected]

http://laszlorendas.com

What Is UX?• I study how people interact with technology

• Websites, apps, video games, physical objects

• I make these products more user friendly by:

• Taking a user centered approach to design and research

• Conducting usability tests with specific tasks

• Then getting awesome feedback (data) about the product

• Give this data back to the developers and designers to take into consideration with future iterations

Table of Contents• Research Question

• Why We Did This

• Method To Our Madness

• Results

• Real World Uses

Research Question

Is there a difference in a person’s reading speed and

comprehension on various screen sized devices?

Question Why Method Results Real World

Why We Did This• Technology is always changing

• Devices made just for reading (Kindle)

• Screen sizes are getting bigger

• Screen resolution is getting better

• Books seem to be becoming obsolete


Method To Our Madness• Users were recruited from Psychology classes

• They were given a demographic

• What devices they use and how often

• If they liked to read and how often

• Do they have a reading disability?

• Next we gave them the Nelson Denny


Awesomeness

Nelson Denny• Standardized measure of reading performance

• Participants had 15 minutes to work though 7 short passages

• Each passage has its own set of questions

• With a total of 38 comprehension questions.

• We were able to get an idea of their reading speed and comprehension

Method To Our Awesomeness• Each participant read a short story on each device

• Used 3 devices which had Amazon’s Kindle app

• Default font was Caecilia

• 17” Desktop computer

• 10” Kindle

• 3” Smart phone

• The participants were given 10 min to read the stories


Passage from The Dubliners

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly.

Passage from Blink

Some years ago a young couple came to the University of Washington to visit the laboratory of a psychologist named John Gottman they were in their twenties blond and blue eyed with stylishly tousled haircuts and funky glasses…

So They Read, Now What?• We wrote down the last 4 words that they read

• So we could calculate words per minute

• Participants answered 2 questions for each story

• Calculate comprehension

• Fill out satisfaction survey for each device

• Then they read the next story on the next device

• Rinse and repeat until done with stories


Dubliners Question

What was the main idea in this passage?

A. Death of an older man B. It is unhealthy for old men to

babysit C. Priests and their religious

views D. Religion is troublesome

Blink Question

What was the contentious item that the couple was discussing?

A. Money B. The dog C. Their children D. Her mother

Are They Done Yet?• Yes, they are finally done!


• But we aren’t

Results!!!!! (Finally)


Results


Words Per Minute (wpm)

130

138

147

155

163

172

180

Mobile Kindle Computer Book

138

150157

142

162 162

173 174BlinkDubliners

Results


• Blink was easier to read than Dubliners

• Dubliners is an older book (1914)

• Has a lot of infrequently used words or metaphors

• No significant difference between screen size and reading speed

• Over 70 participants experienced no appreciable difference between their reading speed or their comprehension when their reading was compared across the four screens

• Didn’t seem to matter if only a few sentences were presented on the 3” screen or if several paragraphs were presented on the 17” screen

Results


• Basically this means that people are able to switch from small screens to bigger screens with ease

• Reading speed did vary a lot though

• Some participants were as low as 50 wpm

• Others were as high as 300+ wpm

• Range of 250+ wpm (we call these people outliers)

• Average reading speed for our participants is 174 wpm

• Most adult’s reading speed is 200 wpm

Results


• Majority of the participant would rather read out of a book

• Next best thing would be a tablet

Book 63% Computer

6%

Kindle 27%

Mobile 4%

Results


• Reading disabled participants said that they enjoyed using the smaller screened devices

• Comprehension has floor and ceiling effects

• When given multiple choice questions, users got them all correct

• When given open ended questions, it was difficult to justify what was correct or incorrect

Other Factors• Difficulty of the reading material will alter reading speed and

comprehension

• Participants may not be in the right mind set

• They could get bored, worry about a test, not have enough sleep

• Some participants forgot the exact place they stopped in a story

• This alters our calculation for words per minute

Real World Uses• If you're making an app with blogs or news articles

• Make it for tablet first

• Don’t worry about screen size

• Make sure the content fits on the screen (responsive)

• Use conversational language
