Reading and writing with computers: a framework for explaining differences in performance

Reviewer: James Clinton Spohrer

Understanding the factors that influence human performance in writing and reading tasks becomes increasingly important as we spend more and more of our time writing and reading with computer screens instead of with paper. The authors present a list of seven factors that they use to explain performance differences when people write and read with paper, personal computers, and workstations. They identify four primary factors—page size, legibility, responsiveness, and tangibility—and three secondary factors—sense of text, sense of direction, and sense of engagement. These seven factors can be varied to influence the quality and speed of reading and writing performance. The authors explain the results of four experimental tasks—spatial recall, retrieval, reordering lines, and writing letters—in terms of their seven factors. All experiments showed that for reading tasks, paper was superior, followed by workstations and finally by personal computers. For writing tasks, working on paper produced the highest quality letters, while those letters composed on workstations were longer. The authors have used the results of these experiments to improve the user interface of their computer-based system for reading and writing documents. This paper will interest both researchers studying human-computer interface issues and designers of computer-based systems for reading and writing documents. It is quite concise but still manages to relate the authors' research to other work in the field. The framework that the authors present also serves as a useful introduction to the factors that influence the behavior of those who write and read with computers.