RE:online Documents

Subject: RE:online Documents
From: Dan Emory <danemory -at- primenet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>, "Free Framers" <framers -at- omsys -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 09:20:47 -0700


A week or two ago, I posted a lengthy dissertation that cited experimental results indicating substantial reductions in comprehension and retention when when people attempt to read typical on-line docs, particularly those of a technical nature. Those and other studies also indicated that there are significant improvements when such documents resemble the typography and layout of well-designed printed books. A number of you asked me to provide some citations for those findings.

Although I believe most net surfers and users of on-line help would confirm these findings from their own experience, I provide below some additional citations bearing on the issues discussed in my earlier post on this thread.

First, try the "Human-Computer Interactions Bibliography" at http://www.hcibib.org. This site has a pretty good search engine and a big list of abstracts.

This recent thesis addresses the issue. Also the bibliography in this thesis seems to have several relevant references: http://www.users.redcreek.net/mullanp/Thesis/intro.htm

Dr. Jakob Neilsen has a web site with a big collection of his articles on web readability and usability: http://www.useit.com/
Take a look at the list of articles under the "Alertbox" heading, then browse around. Given his status in the field, he would probably be a good person to ask about further sources.



====================
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====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
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