Navigational characteristics of e-document readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the navigational patterns of graduate students’ text markings when they interact with electronic documents during an active reading process, thus taking on the role of authors. The readings took place in two settings, private and document sharing, where in the latter environment each document was shared among a group of students. The resulting interaction was monitored and electronically logged for each of these environments, which then provided us with user-navigational pat-terns taxonomy. Descriptive and statistical tests were carried out on the activities observed within this taxonomy to develop a framework for comparing the reading patterns for readers working in individual and document sharing environments. This framework was then used to obtain user feedback during the interview sessions that were held with the participants of this study. Because of our investigation, we were able to create a set of specific recommendation that system designers can use in order to create better, more intuitive, and user-friendly electronic reading and marking systems.