title: Effective information design for PDAs in veterinary medical education.
abstract: Until recently, personal digital assistants (PDAs) have been ignominiously characterized as a solution without a problem. To many, they were glorified versions of calendars, address books, notepads, and calculators that appeared only minimally more useful than their paper predecessors. Today's PDAs cater to a wider range of mobile computing needs, especially in the veterinary field, where they support mobile, information-centric work. Despite the PDA's resurgent popularity, hardware constraints limit its wide-scale integration. Most notably, small screen sizes limit the PDA designers who compose texts, videos, and images for PDA delivery. This article addresses the problem of designing for small screens by re-characterizing the issue as an information design problem rather than a hardware problem. By analyzing how fourth-year students in a veterinary medicine program use their PDAs in their clinical education, we offer suggestions for designing information to meet their needs.
authors.affiliation: Department of English, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. jswarts@unity.ncsu.edu
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Swarts
authors.forename: Maggie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vannorman
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D034201:Computers, Handheld / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019992:Databases as Topic; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods; D004520:Education, Veterinary / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D014481:United States