title: Designing an interface to optimize reading with small display windows.
abstract: The extent of electronic presentation of text in small display windows is mushrooming. In the present paper, 4 ways of presenting text in a small display window were examined and compared with a normal page condition: rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), RSVP with a completion meter, sentence-by-sentence presentation, and sentence-by-sentence presentation with a completion meter. Dependent measures were reading efficiency (speed and comprehension) and preference. For designers of hardware or software with small display windows, the results suggest the following: (a) Though RSVP is disliked by readers, the present methods of allowing self-pacing and regressions in RSVP are efficient and feasible, unlike earlier tested methods; (b) slower reading in RSVP should be achieved by increasing pauses between sentences or by repeating sentences, not by decreasing the presentation rate within a sentence; (c) completion meters do not interfere with performance and are usually preferred; (d) the space-saving sentence-by-sentence format is as efficient and as preferred as the normal page format.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rahman
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Muter
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016288:Computer Terminals; D006804:Ergonomics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D014584:User-Computer Interface