Re: Paging vs scrolling - actual research!

  Hope this time it is plain text.
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William Hudson wrote:

...a very interesting study of the effects of paging versus scrolling on
reading tasks.

>...scrolling tended to be better for this purpose.
>
>Full details at
>http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/51/paging_scrolling.htm
>
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Interesting, but...

In the conclusion, the author writes:

"One might have expected that the Scrolling condition may be more time
consuming given the users had to click the scroll bar more times to view
the entire passage than they did in the Paging (3 clicks) or Full (1
click) condition. "

I would like to comment that the expectations of the author are based on
the wrong assumption,
at least when our judgment is based on the theory of multiple mental
resources.

Reading activity requires mental resources of the type that requires the
user's attention, and therefore
involves extra load imposed on the user working memory.
In contrast, after learning how to use the scroll bar, the user's mental
activity is purely psychomotoric,
which does not load the working memory. Therefore, scrolling does not
compete with reading.
On the other hand, navigation by paging requires some extra load on the
working memory, for the users
need to recall on which page they are and to decide which page to go next.

To conclude, in spite of the extra clicks, we might expect that in
reading tasks, scrolling  is more convenient and faster
than paging.

Avi.

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