The purpose of this study is to identify usability issues on a storytelling digital library with six languages provided by the National Library for Children and Young Adults…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to identify usability issues on a storytelling digital library with six languages provided by the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea, and to provide suggestions for future improvement to create a better interface.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, usability issues at the multicultural children’s book project Web site of the NLCY were identified, with comparison between the previous interface and the current one, based on the findings of established literature on children’s use of computer applications and web interface.
Findings
Suggestions for improvements include brighter colors, bigger fonts and graphics, more lively animation and sound, easier navigation, consistent interface, summary availability, better organization of information and labeling and multilingual searching and browsing function. A user study is being planned for future development.
Originality/value
There is a great value in making 400 children’s books available to the public at the NLCY digital library in six different languages with their original pictures animated and their stories performed in a storytelling mode. However, to provide more pleasant access to the valuable site, particularly for children users, there is much room for improvement in terms of the user interface. Based on these findings, a user study is being planned for future development, which should be more intuitive for users, particularly children.
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Wooseob Jeong and Hye Jung Han
The purpose of this study is to analyze the mobile websites of newspapers in terms of their user interface, particularly for the space usage for content.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze the mobile websites of newspapers in terms of their user interface, particularly for the space usage for content.
Design/methodology/approach
Since the early age of the web in the mid‐1990s, many usability recommendations have made for desirable web page design to maximize the valuable but limited space of a screen. To verify whether those recommendations have been applied appropriately to the recent development of mobile web pages, the first pages of 775 online news mobile sites were captured and analyzed in terms of the relationship between the words of the content and various design aspects of the sites. The dependent variable is the number of content words displayed on the first page and the independent variables are the different aspects of the mobile web pages' interface design.
Findings
Multiple practices of wasting space were identified such as too large advertisement areas and navigation only first pages. Suggestions to save the space are made, including automatic URL box hiding. Discussions are carried for various issues such as links to desktop versions and search boxes.
Originality/value
This research is unique in that a large number of mobile news sites were analyzed for their usability and its findings and discussions provide mobile web developers useful information for better mobile web design.