Effects of touchscreen mobile devices and e-book systems for mobile users

This study conducts a user-centered experiment on the touchscreen mobile device and the desktop computer with two popular e-book systems. 48 Taiwanese college students are recruited to perform 5 experimental tasks. The experimental results show the touchscreen mobile device is intuitive for the mobile users to read e-books as compared to the desktop computer. But, interestingly, they prefer to read e-books page by page as reading a traditional physical book. Furthermore, the results indicate the reading performance on the touchscreen mobile device could be compromised by the poor interface design (e.g. `Memory Retrieval' and `Search' functions) of the e-book system. This study suggests the `virtual keyboard' on the touchscreen should be improved and taken into consideration for the new generation touchscreen mobile devices to satisfy their reading requirements.