From paper to screen - the evolution of online reading revisited

1. Introduction: Transition and stepback

Since Gutenberg invented printing in the middle of the 15th century, the way people have been reading and using textual information was dictated by paper, the traditional medium of choice. Today with the innovation of digitalization, there is a new dimension of information processing. Computer technology allows documents to be created, stored, manipulated, organized or searched digitally and virtually. The internet allows information to be easily and globally shared and distributed by means such as hypertexts, digital libraries or e-mail.

Yet experience shows that the benefits of the electronic media didn´t completely cause the revolution they were expected to. The transition from paper to screen stopped when it came to reading. The paperless office is a vision far from reality and while people use electronic media to work with documents online, they still prefer the physical paper medium to read them.

This essay wants to review the transition from reading paper documents to online reading and find out why reading on paper still works better than reading online. It focuses on selected requirements and ergonomics of reading that affect the way users read and in doing so eventually influence the transition from paper to screen.

2. Media Factors

This chapter deals with the differences between the paper medium and the computer screen and in which ways their non-technical characteristics affect the reading process.

Paper is a more comfortable medium for reading than a computer screen. If provides better resolution and sharpness and can be easily adjusted to the readers needs or moved to a position that is more comfortable for example to avoid glare. In contrast computer screens are stationary and force the reader to adjust and hold his own position to the screen. In addition to that, the bulkiness of computer screens also makes online documents less mobile and harder to share than a book or some sheets of paper.

Paper documents provide fixed page size and layout which communicate the type of the page-orientation and hold some spatial memory which helps the reader to build an overall understanding of a document´s structure. Searching, referencing or gathering information in paper documents is done by turning and flipping their pages and is closely connected to reading while on a screen the same activities distract from reading. Online readers have to zoom and scroll through documents since computer screens rarely display whole pages. Online navigation is also harder because the reader just can´t jump between the pages like in a paper document but has to use some kind of electronic navigation like an index which again distracts from reading.

When working with several documents, paper documents can be flexibly arranged to provide a workspace that supports reading and writing concurrently and independently. A user can easily overlock several documents he spread out next to each other, visualize several information at the same time, make quick references between them and work on them practically simultaneously. Online readers have to switch between several windows and can actually only work on one active window since screen space is too limited to place several documents next to each other.

It´s very easy to add all kinds of annotation anywhere on a paper document without changing its layout or content which is an important means for actively understanding and working with a text while reading it. Digital documents often provide only limited possibilities to make annotations which don´t match the flexibility of annotations on paper and sometimes even change the structure of a text. The feature to make annotations if often not or only poorly integrated into a document´s application. Also, annotations often can´t be made on the original document itself but require an extra document.

3. Layout and Navigation

While there are many different aspects of document layout which can influence reading efficiency, this chapter wants to concentrate on some aspects concerning the navigation in a text rather than more obvious aspects like font-size or -resolution.

Research shows that the layout of a text can partially influence the efficiency of reading paper and online documents. An experiment by Zaphiris and Kurniawan tested the presentation of text in three different formats (1, 2 and 3 columns). There were no significant differences in reading speed between the three formats for both reading paper and online documents. The results of previous studies that reading from paper is significantly faster than reading online documents (around 10-30 %) were supported but only for the formats in which the text was formatted into 1 or 2 columns. There was no significant difference in reading speed between paper and screen for the 3-columns format.

These results suggest that the layout of a document has an effect on the users´ navigation while reading. Long lines pose a greater threat of losing orientation than a text that is broken into smaller lines an several columns. It was also observed that users reading paper documents more often used auxiliaries like pencils or their fingers to keep track of their position in a text.

Another experiment by Aaronson and Colet in 1997 shows the influence of navigating on a computer screen while reading. They showed the words of a text one at a time in the center of a screen; every time the reader pressed a button the next word of the text overwrote the previous one. By eliminating all eye movements, this method was able to increase reading-speed significantly.

Both experiments and their results show how important textual layout is for navigation in a document which itself is crucial for reading-speed and understanding. Differences between the reading efficiency of paper and online documents are obvious since paper documents are formatted by a fixed layout while the layout of online documents often changes since the text can be reflowed by browsers and word-processors which causes disorientation.

4. Summary

The facts that the reading efficiency of paper documents is much higher than the reading efficiency of online documents and that people read between 10 and 30 % faster on paper have been discovered a long time ago. Meanwhile the technology has improved a lot and offers better possibilities to even the differences between paper and screen.

But technology isn´t the only factor to improve online reading. When making the transition from paper to screen one should not forget about the elements that are responsible for the usability of paper documents. As shown in this essay, they will be crucial to complete the transition and develop products that combine the comfort and usability people know from paper and the benefits that digitalization and information processing provide. The future of online reading starts in the past with paper documents´s usability and continues with the innovations of modern technologies.

5. References

Aaronson, D. and Colet, E. (1997): Reading paradigms: From lab to cyberspace. In Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 250-255.

Bailey, Bob (1999): UI Design Update Newsletter - February, 1999. URL: http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/feb99.asp. Stand: 13.12.2003.

Muter, Paul and Maurutto, Paula (1991) Reading And Skimming From Computer Screens And Books: The Paperless Office Revisited? In: Behaviour & Information Technology, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.257-266. URL: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~muter/pmuter2.htm. Stand: 14.12.2003.

O'Hara, Kenton and Sellen, Abigail (1997): A Comparison of Reading Paper and On-Line Documents. In: Proceedings of CHI'97, pp. 335-342. New York: ACM Press.

Schilit, B. N., Price, M.N., Golovchinsky, G., Tanaka, K., and Marshall, C.C. (1999): As We May Read: The Reading Appliance Revolution. In: IEEE Computer, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 65-73.

Zaphiris, Panayiotis and Kurniawan, Sri H.: Effects Of Information Layout On Reading Speed: Differences Between Paper And Monitor Presentation. URL: http://www.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~broll/www.%20%20%20citeseer.nj.nec.com/571441.html. Stand: 13.12.2003.

Zaphiris, Panayiotis and Kurniawan, Sri H.: Reading Online Or On Paper: Which Is Faster? URL: http://www.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~broll/www.citeseer.nj.nec.com/560046.html. Stand: 13.12.2003.