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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.
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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| Nullius in Verba |
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Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory -at- primenet -dot- com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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