Blog site for:
Hypertext and Textual Studies
(HUM 523/ENGL 593/C LIT 596)
University of Washington
Seminar leader, Dr. Míċeál Vaughan
I just posted the introduction for my project at http://www.translatorsbeowulf.com.
As I continue to develop the project, updates will be posted here. I hope you all stop by to take a look from time to time.
Thanks for the great class!
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 12:41 PM
0 comments
posted by Alicia at 12:33 PM
0 comments
I've made a site for my electronic translator's Beowulf project here: http://www.translatorsbeowulf.com.
Hopefully, I'll be adding my description of the project/the final assignment for class soon.
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 5:08 PM
0 comments
I can give a presentation tomorrow on what I have so far, though I admittedly don't have much. I actually would like to get everyone's input on my project.
Basically, I have now an XML document for my "Translator's Beowulf" project and a form for entering information into the XML file. I have only transcribed the first three lines of the poem, and I have created only a few of my XML tags. If there is time in class, I'd like to get your input on what tags I should be including, how I should nest the tags, etc.
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 11:09 AM
1 comments
Here's some info relevant to my presentation today on the Electronic Beowulf, which is basically the contents of my handout.
Doug
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 6:46 AM
0 comments
I managed to get the Hengwrt Digital Chaucer working. I'm pretty sure the problem was that the CD contains an older version of the Anastasia software, which is essentially a web server that tells Internet Explorer what to display in frames depending on what you choose to look at. My guess is that it works in the library because they already have the newer version of Anastasia installed. Anyway, I now have it running on my home machine, which is Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7.0. I have also confirmed that it works with Firefox version 1.5, which I only downloaded in an act of pure charity for verifying functionality for all of you Mozilla people. I will test it on my Vista laptop as soon as I go back to the classroom and get the power cord that I left plugged in the wall.
Basically, I downloaded the "Running the Hengwrt Research Edition from your hard disc (Windows and Mac)" section of this page: http://www.sd-editions.com/anastasia/fixes/index.html. The fringe benefit is that you don't need the CD to run get to the content (you need to get content off the CD to make it work the first time). I suppose you are on your honor to delete the material after you check the CD back into the library.
In other news, we were talking about the annoyance of underlined text on Perseus today. In Internet Explorer, you can get rid of underlined links by going Tools | Internet Options | Advanced. The option is about a third of the way down. You can also dictate your own style sheet by selecting General | Accessibility. In Firefox, you can override underlining by going to Tools | Content | Colors…, and unchecked the box in the Link Colors section. To make a custom CSS file for Firefox, you need to find your Firefox profile (the location will be different on different operating systems--just search for "userContent") and change the name of the userContent-example.css file to userContent.css, then edit the file (I can't seem to get this to work, however, but it works in theory). If anyone wants me to post a detailed explanation as to how to create a simple CSS file or how to associate it with Internet Explorer or Firefox, let me know and I will.
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 5:42 PM
0 comments
Designing Usable Electronic Text, Second Edition
Andrew Dillon
"The major aim of the present work is to examine and subsequently describe the reading process from a perspective that sheds light on the potential for information technology to support that process."
Dillon's overall goal seems to be to suggest to designers of electronic text that they consider ergonomic factors when planning and releasing designs. "Suggest" is perhaps too weak of a term; more accurate might be to say that Dillon asserts an almost ethical imperative to consider such factors. He laments that "human factors are often considered at a stage too late to effect better designs." Specifically, he advocated the use of the TIME framework for planning the design of electronic texts.
Dillon evaluates the various ways in which one could measure differences between screen and paper reading and offers reference to the current research showing whether paper or screen scores higher in a given area of evaluate and how that result compares to the expected result.
The differences can be organized as follows:
"Outcome measures concentrate on the results of reading."
Dillon asserts, "By far the most common experimental finding over the past 20 years is that silent reading from screen is significantly slower than reading from paper." "Figures vary according to means of calculation and experimental design but the weight of evidence suggests a performance deficit of between 20 per cent and 30 per cent when reading from screen." However, other tests have shown that under certain conditions, speeds are statistically equivalent. Dillon concludes that while it is commonplace to assert that screen reading is slower, it is not cut and dry.
Dillon admits that this term is rather loose in the research, but it can involve such things as locating information, recalling content, or locating errors (like spelling). Again, the available research favors print as studies show significantly poorer accuracy on screens. The exception to this rule comes when the accuracy test involves finding information using search. Studies have shown that hypertext versions make it easier for subject to find information not contained in headings and titles.
One of the problems with assessing data with regards to comprehension is that several studies fail to user "experienced" subjects. That is, the lower comprehension of some users may be due to the lack of familiarity with screen reading as opposed to some intrinsic problem with comprehension from the screen. More recent studies, particularly since the widespread advent of hypermedia, suggest that there is not a significant difference between comprehension levels on screen and print. Dillon concludes, "So it would seem that reading from screens does not negatively affect comprehension rates though it may affect the speed with which readers can attain a given level of comprehension."
A common concern about reading from screens is the fear of negative side effects for screen-readers. Dillon's analysis of research concludes that, in fact, fatigue is a bigger problem with screen reading, particularly when reading for extended periods of time. Screen quality has, as you might imagine, a huge impact on fatigue. Dillon says, "It would seem safe to conclude that users do not find reading from screens intrinsically fatiguing but that performance levels may be more difficult to sustain over time when reading from average quality screens. As screen standards increase over time this problem should be minimised. However, what may take much longer to overcome is the commonly held belief that screen reading is more fatiguing, regardless of any test results from a user study."
Dillon reveals that there is a conception that the ergonomic field tends to push technology, often concluding that naïve users tend to dislike computers but researches tend to illustrate their superiority. Without saying much more about this, Dillon concludes that there remains a strong preference for paper, though he acknowledges some support for the argument that improved screen quality and increased user familiarity with technology is leading to a shift in preference. He cites an interesting survey (from 2000) in which only 15% of readers of an online journal actually read articles online. The rest choose to print the articles. (I might hypothesize, however, that even now, just seven years later, a far greater number of users read online; if for no other reason, the affordability of LCD screens.)
Measuring process involves examining the ways in which a user physically encounters a text. Dillon discusses the difficulty in evaluating process as the observation method must be unobtrusive enough to prevent the skewing off results. He also claims that people commonly assert that there must be great process differences between print and screen reading.
Dillon defines: "Eye movements during reading are characterised by a series of jumps and fixations. The latter are of duration approximately 250 milliseconds and it is during these that word perception occurs." After describing a processing for investigating eye movement patterns while reading which uses a photoelectric monitoring system, Dillon concludes:
"Analysis revealed that when reading from screen, subjects made significantly more (15 per cent) forward fixations per line. However, this 15% difference translated into only one fixation per line. Generally, eye-movement patterns were similar and no difference in duration was observed. Gould et al. explained the 15 per cent fixation difference in terms of image quality variables. Interestingly, they report that there was no evidence that subjects lost their place, 'turned-off' or refixated more when reading from screen."
Manipulation involves the physical movement on an object, such as flipping a page or clicking a scroll button. Dillon says, "Perhaps the most obvious difference between reading from paper and from screens is the ease with which paper can be manipulated and the corresponding difficulty of so doing with electronic text." He discusses how we learn skills for manipulating paper text, such as leaving a finger in a page to mark a place, early in life. Also, he brings up the fact that there exists a wide variety of methods for manipulating electronic texts (using a wheel mouse, a stylus, a keyboard, etc).
Navigation involves moving through a document. Dillon says, "There is a striking consensus among many researchers in the field that this process is the single greatest difficulty for readers of electronic text. This is particularly (but not uniquely) the case with hypertext where frequent reference is made to 'getting lost in hyperspace'" and "The general findings suggest that users are more likely to experience navigation difficulties in hypermedia environments than they are in paper and that considerable design effort is required to ensure that the navigational overhead does not limit the cognitive resources available for content comprehension."
Having delineated the types of differences, Dillon examines the reasons why such differences occur. He divides the sources of difference into four categories, each with subcategories:
Because there are obvious physical differences between electronic and paper texts, researchers have examined how these aspects affect performance.
This refers to the way in which you are holding a text. For example, are you holding a book in front of your face, looking down on it at a table, holding it up while lying down. Obviously, books have an advantage in that they are small and portable enough to be reoriented whereas most electronic texts cannot be so manipulated.
Defined as the relationship between width and height, aspect ratio is fixed in a book but can be altered on screen. Books tend to be taller than they are wide, whereas screens tend to be the opposite, though text can be manipulated to allow it to mimic the aspect ratio of a book.
This characteristic involves how a text might be physically handled. For instance, a paperback offers advantages in handling and manipulating over a large anthology. Dillon says, "Not only are books relatively easy to handle and manipulate, but also one set of handling and manipulation skills serves to operate most document types. Electronic documents, however, cannot be handled directly at all but must be presented through a computer screen and, even then, the operations one can perform and the manner in which they are performed can vary tremendously from one presentation system to another."
"Popular wisdom," Dillon says, "suggests that 'bigger is better' but empirical support for this edict is sparse." Dillon discusses how larger print size on a screen causes more need to interact (to scroll, click to a new page, etc) just as a larger print size in a book results in the need to turn pages more often.
Perceptual differences involve how humans are actually presented with the text for processing.
Image quality seems to be one of the most important factors for Dillon. He divides his discussion of image quality into several components.
Because electronic characters are constantly being regenerated, they may appear to flicker. Flicker may also be imperceptible. Flicker diminishes with an appropriate refresh rate, with the consensus being that at least 72 HZ is necessary for comfort.
Studies have shown that holding a book at different angles can significantly affect speed and accuracy. Additionally, increased distance from a screen reduces fatigue, though screen readers often use short viewing differences to combat reflections and glares.
Basically, is it black text on a white background (positive) or white text on a black background (negative). Books and most screen presentations tend to be positive, though it had been in vogue, says Dillon, to claim that negative polarity yielded better results, but studies differ.
If I might interject here, I would claim that positive polarity is "natural" to books whereas negative is "natural" to screens, given that to create a negative polarity book would take excessive dye and to create a positive polarity on a screen takes additional light. When printing on paper, you start with white and add to it. The opposite might be said to be true on screen.
This involves things like font selecting, line spacing, character spacing, kerning, etc. Many studies have been performed to show the effects of these decisions on reading performance. For example, certain fonts lead to increase reading speed.
Anti-aliasing technology reduces the jagged edges that would appear on screen letters making screen letters look like print letters. Studies have shown that while there are no significant performance differences between reading aliased versus anti-aliased characters, readers overwhelmingly prefer anti-aliased.
Cognitive differences involve how readers process information once hit has been perceived.
Here, Dillon discusses problems with issues such as splitting a sentence across screens which disrupts the capacity of the memory. Since readers are more likely to flip back a page when reading a book then go back a screen when reading an electronic text, the effect is potentially more detrimental to electronic texts. However, electronic texts could theoretically be designed to avoid such breaks.
Dillon asserts, "There is evidence to suggest that readers establish a visual memory for the location of items within a printed text based on their spatial location both on the page and within the document." Screen presentation can therefore be problematic because the information does not always appear on the same part of a page.
Readers have a familiarity with how a text will likely be organized: it will contain a table of context; depending on the type of work, it will contain an alphabetized index; etc. Dillon asserts that the reason for less understanding of structure in electronic documents is not only the short history, but "it is also the case that the medium's underlying structures do not have equivalent transparency."
Dillon asserts that little work has been done assessing the social elements that shape human responses to documents.
Common discussion of electronic text often centers on the idea of cultural force driving the change in technology. "Eventually a new generation will accept electronic text," would be an example of such thinking. In this regard, Dillon compares the current situation with is akin to the early stages of the Guttenberg press. Dillon is cautious in this area throughout the book, however. He brings up the fact, for instance, that proponents of electronic text thought that electronic text would have displaced print by now. He also insists that the performance differences in the media will not disappear simply because people become more experienced.
Basically, different areas of study have different needs and therefore lead to different levels of acceptance of electronic text and different levels of performance when using electronic text.
The third fourth of the book, which I will be glossing over here, essentially establishes the following:
Dillon lays out the "TIMEFrame" framework for designing electronic texts to guide those engaged in the design process and to ground his argument in a practical solution rather than mere abstraction. The framework does not give specific design advice, but rather lays out what a designer should be considering when creating an electronic text.
Before laying out his framework, Dillon suggests that a design framework must meet the following criteria:
Dillon makes clear five assumptions upon which his framework rests:
The TIMEFrame is a framework that presents for consideration four key factors that affect usability: task, information model, manipulation skill and facilities, and ergonomic variables.
The task "reflects the reader's needs and uses for the material." When designing a text, the question must be raised of why the reader will be going that text, what he or she attempt to get out of the text, and what the reader will actually read.
The information model "consists of the user's mental model of the information space." This model is the result of the reader's attempt to give the material presented a meaningful structure. This model is not only based on the reader's encounter with the text, but also has to do with the reader's experience.
Manipulation skills and facilities "support physical use of the material." For example, will the reader likely "flip through" the book or will it be read straight through? Designers here would consider what Dillon calls "the digital equivalent to the finger that is less permanent than a bookmark and serves the temporary holding of a place in space."
Ergonomic variables "support physical use of the material." This factor deals with elements such as eye movement, fixations, and other physical acts not directly described as "reading."
There are twelve possible "exchanges" between these four factors of the framework. The most typical exchange would flow in the order T -> I -> M -> E. For example, let's says that a reader is picking up a book on botany with the intention of looking up the importance of bees in plant development. The task, then, is to find information about bees. This interacts with the Information Model in that the readers, either based on knowledge of the genre of book or having already looked at the book, understand that the book is structured with an index at the end showing key words and concepts. The next exchange occurs when the information model interacts with the reader's manipulation skills. Simply, the reader flips to the index, find page numbers, and flips to those pages, probably keeping a finger in the book to hold the place of the index. Finally, the manipulation interacts with visual ergonomics when the reader's eyes move over the index entry.
There are, however, ways for the factors to interact with each other in a less linear fashion. Here are the 12 possible interactions:
I will not retell the description for each, but just to give a few more examples: M -> T might occur when a reader realizes that a text cannot be manipulated in a certain way, and therefore changes the task. E -> I might occur when the reader's eye movement picks up data about a text that leads to an altered view of the information model.
So what is the TIMEFrame for, anyway? Dillon lays out the framework as a suggestion for designers to consider when designing a text. He says, for example, "The designer could conceptualize the intended users in a TIME framework and thereby guide or inform their prototyping activities."
Using the framework allows a designer to consider four major issues:
Dillon proposes three potential uses for the timeframe:
Ever attempting to make his text practical for designers, Dillon puts forth a short list of steps for designers shortly before concluding. So, according to Dillon, here's what you should do if you are attempting to create an electronic text:
A text without a reader is worthless. Similarly, a technology without a user is pointless. The human is the key; only by relating technologies to the needs and capabilities of the user can worthwhile systems be developed. The work in this book is a step in that direction for electronic texts, but there remains a long journey ahead.
posted by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen at 11:20 AM
0 comments
