CH Note: (Jakob) Nielsen-Norman ranked National Geographic’s Intranet as one of the 10 Best in the World in 2007. For us, this was winning the Oscar, so I’m always eager to read his studies.
Personally, I haven’t noticed a decrease in reading speed on my Kindle or on my iPad, although the virtual-book look with “real” pages in iPad’s e-book makes it easier to read. Also, I was wasting time on the Kindle by clicking to the next page before I finished the last two lines and then I’d have to click back, read and click forward.
Reading on Paper is Faster than iBooks on the iPad (PC World)
It will take you longer to read a book on an iPad or Kindle compared to the printed page, according to a recent study. Dr. Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group–a product development consultancy that is not associated with Nielsen, the metrics company–compared the reading times of 24 users on the Kindle 2, an iPad using the iBooks application, a PC monitor and good old fashioned paper. The study found that reading on an electronic tablet was up to 10.7 percent slower than reading a printed book. [Note: Kindle was 10.7 percent slower; iPad 6.2% slower.] Despite the slower reading times, Nielsen found that users preferred reading books on a tablet device compared to the paper book. The PC monitor, meanwhile, was universally hated as a reading platform among all test subjects.
Complaints about the Kindle 2, iPad’s iBooks, and PCs were predictable, says Nielsen, and I agree. It’s hard to tell where you are in a Kindle because there are no pages and lack of color; the iPad is heavy to hold [even at less than 1.5 pounds]; and it is lousy to read on a PC. Test participants complained that it felt like work.
Wrote Nielsen:
This study is promising for the future of e-readers and tablet computers. We can expect higher-quality screens in the future, as indicated by the recent release of the iPhone 4 with a 326 dpi display. But even the current generation is almost as good as print in formal performance metrics — and actually scores slightly higher in user satisfaction.
More on Reading and Tablets
The qualitative findings on users’ reactions to reading from screens are presented in our 2-day seminar on Writing for the Web at the annual Usability Week conference.
The conference also has a full-day seminar on designing touch-screen user interfaces, including mobile phones and tablets.