Is there a difference in a person’s reading speed and comprehension on various screen sized devices? My study shows that there isn't a significant difference.
2. Laszlo Rendas
User Experience (UX) Research and Design
Graduate Student at
Missouri Western State University
LaszloRendas.com
@Laszlo_Rendas
Lrendas@gmail.com
3. 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
4. Table of Contents
• Research Question
• Why We Did This
• Method To Our Madness
• Results
• Real World Uses
5. 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
6. 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
Question Why Method Results Real World
7. 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
Question Why Method Results Real World
Awesomeness
8. 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
9. 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
Question Why Method Results Real World
10.
11. 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.
12. 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…
13. 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
Question Why Method Results Real World
14. 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
15. Blink
Question
What was the contentious item that
the couple was discussing?
A. Money
B. The dog
C. Their children
D. Her mother
16. Are They Done Yet?
• Yes, they are finally done!
Question Why Method Results Real World
• But we aren’t
18. Results
Question Why Method Results Real World
Words Per Minute (wpm)
130
138
147
155
163
172
180
Mobile Kindle Computer Book
138
150
157
142
162 162
173 174
Blink
Dubliners
19. Results
Question Why Method Results Real World
• 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
20. Results
Question Why Method Results Real World
• 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
21. Results
Question Why Method Results Real World
• 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%
22. Results
Question Why Method Results Real World
• 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
23. 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
24. 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
Question Why Method Results Real World
