• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.4 s.66
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• pp.51-60
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• 2006

Nowadays, reading text from screens is prevailing in everyday life. The advent of mobile information devices such as a cellular phone, PDA, and e-book reader facilitates us to enjoy various text-based contents any time and anywhere. Most studies comparing screen and paper readability show that screens are less readable than paper. Furthermore, the decrease of line length and number of lines that can be displayed on the screen of mobile information devices deteriorate text readability. This study investigated parameters affecting text readability on small screens and designed a new text layout to improve readability. We suggested a diagonally splitted layout of rectangular column, which is supposed to facilitate eye movement to trace text flow with ease. The experiment comparing readability between a traditional rectangular column and a diagonally splitted column was conducted. The result of experiment revealed that there is no significant difference between the two text layouts in terms of subjective satisfaction of reading task and a level of comprehension. However, in the screen size of $4000mm^2\;and\;8000mm^2$, reading speed was increased 18.9% and 34.0% respectively from a traditional rectangular column to a diagonally splitted column. We conducted a consecutive experiment to scrutinize the cause that improved the performance in readability task remarkably. The readability of text in a traditional rectangular column was compared with a left triangular column and a right triangular column in the condition of $4000mm^2/3:1$ ratio screen. The performance measurements revealed that participants read 21.1% and 67.6% faster respectively with the left triangular column and right triangular column than with the rectangular column. In consequence, the improvement of readability in the diagonally splitted column was attributed mainly to the increase of reading speed in the right triangular column. This research verified that the diagonally splitted column improve text readability on a small screen and this result is expected to make a contribution to designing an efficient text layout for mobile information devices