The active reading task: e-books and their readers

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the Active Reading task, a recent addition to the INEX Book Search track¹. This task aims at exploring how people interact with e-books in different scenarios of use. Besides, it has been designed to take into account a corpus of research on e-book usability and make sure this does not become obsolete but actually inform the design of better, and more usable, e-books and e-readers in the future. This paper starts introducing the relevant research context in order to justify the crucial role of the Active Reading task. It then describes the rational behind the task and its origins. It goes on to examine its aims and objectives, by exploring its related research questions and looking at expectations it should raise, and the positive impact such initiative could have on the e-book research community.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Measurement

Keywords:
E-books, active reading, evaluation, usability, user studies