Evaluation and Satisfaction Survey on the Interface Usability of Online Publishing Software

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Research Article

Evaluation and Satisfaction Survey on the Interface

Usability of Online Publishing Software

Ying-Jye Lee and Chia-Ju Lin

Department of Cultural & Creative Industries, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, 415 Chien Kung Road, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan

Correspondence should be addressed to Ying-Jye Lee; yjlee@cc.kuas.edu.tw Received 6 May 2014; Accepted 9 May 2014; Published 11 June 2014 Academic Editor: Teen-Hang Meen

Copyright © 2014 Y.-J. Lee and C.-J. Lin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Digital publishing is one of the national key programs. Different from traditional digital publishing models, consumers could create personal digital publications with the editing program provided by businesses and combine it with web-to-print to output solid publications. Nevertheless, the usability of online publishing software is related to consumers’ acceptance or intention of product purchase. In this case, Focus Group is utilized to screen representative online publishing software (including TinTint, Photobook, and Hypo) for evaluating interface usability, investigating users’ Subjective Satisfaction, and further proposing suggestions for interface modification. Learnability and the number of user errors are set as the evaluation indicators of usability. Within the evaluation indicators in Learnability, the results show that nine typical tasks, except for Storing, show significant difference between various online publishing software. Typical tasks of basic information of works, appending pictures, adjusting pictures, changing type version, and changing pages in the number of user errors reveal significant difference on distinct online publishing software. Regarding the evaluation of overall Subjective Satisfaction with interface, TinTint and Hypo outperform Photobook, and no significant difference appears between TinTint and Hypo. It is expected that the research model could be the application reference of interface development and evaluation in digital content industries.

1. Introduction

Cultural and creative industry was included in Challenge 2008, National Development Program, proposed by the government in May 2002. With the concept of industrial chain, the value of cultural industries is redefined to expand the creative field, and humanity and economy are combined to develop industries covering cultural accumulation and economic benefits. Cultural and Creative Industry Develop-ment Act was made public by the Ministry of Culture in February 2010, in which, publishing industry is classified by the Government Information Office, in 2007 Publishing Almanac, into press publishing, magazine publishing, audio-book publishing, audio-book publishing, and digital publishing. Digital publishing and archives industries are defined as the industries covering publishing, circulation, and archives, applying the Internet, information technology, and copyright management mechanism to creating new operation models

for new markets, enhancing the production, circulation, and service chain of digital knowledge. Digital publishing covers electronic books, electronic magazines, electronic paper, elec-tronic database, and mobile contents. Digital publishing is not simply a part of digital content industries but a new form of publishing. Within numerous digital publishing items, electronic book industry is the focus of public concern.

There have been businesses promoting online publishing software in recent years, which is different from traditional digital publishing models. Editors in traditional digital pub-lishing industries serve as the edit creator, while the ones in online publishing industries are the consumer themselves. The consumers apply the editing program provided by the businesses to create unique digital publications exclusive of individual consumers and combining web-to-print for outputting solid publications. Such online publishing models have gradually been applied to personal albums, postcards, desk calendars, and flashcards. Using online publishing

Volume 2014, Article ID 842431, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/842431

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2 Mathematical Problems in Engineering models not only reduces human resource investment and

repeated proofreading costs but also customizes products, solves the communication problems between the production end and consumers in the past editing process, and creates new channels and territories for digital publishing. Online publishing therefore is regarded as a standard customization model.

Nevertheless, the highly developed science and tech-nology have products which no longer are requested for products functions. When the functions among different brand products are not remarkable and there are numerous options, interface usability becomes a key factor in the users

choosing the product [2]. In the network era, applying online

publishing software to web-to-print is expected. Usability of online publishing software interface therefore is worthy of considerations. The idea of usability used to be applied to the research on human-computer interaction (HCI), especially

the usability for software improvement interface [1, 3–5].

The favorable development and effectiveness of usability in HCI has the concept of usability applied to other fields, such

as usability improvement of consumption products [6] and

usability evaluation for color selection interface of

customer-tailored products [7]. In this case, this study tends to evaluate

the test and analysis of online publishing software interface usability with usability engineering and further propose suggestions related to the problems and design of online publishing software interface usability.

In conclusion, literatures on digital publishing, online publishing software, and usability are explored and organized

[8]. Focus Group is applied to screening large-scale and

representative online publishing software; interface usability is evaluated for the users, and online publishing software performance is analyzed. Meanwhile, it is expected to realize the online publishing software users’ demands for software and further propose the user-friendly interface for designers or relevant businesses as well as the promotion of online pub-lishing software usability. The research results are expected to provide the governmental sectors or other relevant sectors like online game businesses and electronic book publishers with directions for digital content interface design. The research model is expected to be applied to the digital content usability evaluation in other areas of Taiwan, providing valuable reference for digital content or other industries.

2. Evaluation of User Interface and Usability

A favorable user interface starts from understanding people, rather than figures, as software is merely the tool for certain objectives. The better satisfaction would please the users more. The systems designed by designers are often different from the users’ imagination and understanding of such systems. It is considered as mental model when designing user interface. If the user’s mental model is different from the system, the user interface of the system exist usability problems. Usability refers to an accessible and accepted system for specific users conducting certain tasks in

cer-tain environments [9]. Usability engineering is proposed by

Nielsen [1], who considered usability as being consistent of

multiple attributes and proposed the following evaluation indicators.

(1) Learnability. The system is easy to learn and use for

begin-ners. The novice users are measured for understanding the learnability of the system. Generally, the time of novice users being familiar with the system or the successful percentage of designated tasks is measured for the judgment.

(2) Efficiency of Use. After the users are acquainted with the

system, high productivity would be achieved. The experts also measured the time for completing a specific typical task.

(3) Memorability. When general users return to the system

after a period of time, they do not learn the system again. Moreover, casual users are tested for the memorability with the time spent or the number of times of correct answers.

(4) Error Rate. It allows the users to make fewer mistakes

and easily verify the mistakes; and dramatic errors would not appear on the system. Errors are normally classified into deadly errors, minor errors, and real-time modified errors.

(5) Subjective Satisfaction. The users’ satisfaction with the

system is often measured with questionnaires in order to understand the preference. The user requirements, advan-tages, and shortcomings of various usability evaluations are

shown inTable 1.

The online publishing software presents entertainment characteristics that the user interface focused on high learn-ability, low error rate, and high subjective satisfaction. Per-formance measurement is therefore utilized for evaluating Learnability and the number of user errors of online publish-ing software interface, and questionnaire survey is applied to understanding users’ subjective satisfaction with the software interface.

3. Methods

3.1. Experimental Planning. Focus Group method used in this

study screens the representative online publishing software. Focus Group is often used for evaluating users’ demands

[10–12] for objective and representative solutions. The Focus

Group members are divided into two, with six interviewed members in each group to discuss the representative online publishing software as the research samples. (The top three samples are selected.) The members in Focus Group are

interviewed with semi-structural questions,Table 2.

The subjects are requested to freely browse the contents, software instruction, instructional video, or operation soft-ware of each softsoft-ware website for three minutes before the experiment, aiming to be close to the users’ habits. The interface usability testing of online publishing software is further investigated after completing the 3-minute learning (total nine minutes). Usability testing aims to test the users using the system in laboratories. In Usability Engineering Lifecycle, the usability testing of performance measurement is important for evaluating the achievement of usability

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Table 11: Descriptive statistics of overall Subjective Satisfaction.

Software name Number Mean Standard deviation Confidence interval Min Max

Lower bound Upper bound

TinTint 30 5.18 1.05694 4.7917 5.5810 2.49 6.96 Photobook 30 3.48 .99901 3.1100 3.8560 1.57 6.18 Hypo 30 4.92 .80455 4.6196 5.2204 3.63 6.77 Total 90 4.52 1.21083 4.2762 4.7834 1.57 6.96 A p p endin g p ic tur es C o p yin g t o p ics In se rt in g p ic tur es A d ju stin g p ic tur e In p u tt in g w o rd s Ch an gi n g pa ge s Pre vi ew ing St o rin g Typical task TinTint Photobook Hypo In p u tt in g basic in for m at ion Ch an gi n g type ve rs io n 35 30 25 20 15 10 0 5 N u m b er s o f us er er ro rs

Figure 2: Number of user errors comparison of the representative online publishing software.

Table 12: ANOVA of overall Subjective Satisfaction.

Source of variance SS df MS 𝐹 𝑃

Between groups 50.372 2 25.186 27.352 0.00∗∗ Within groups 80.111 87 0.921

Total 130.484 89

∗∗_{𝑃 < 0.01.}

Table 13: Multiple comparison analysis regarding overall Subjective Satisfaction of the typical task.

Software name TinTint (5.18) Photobook (3.48) Hypo (4.92)

TinTint 0.00∗∗ 0.285

Photobook 0.00∗∗ 0.00∗∗

Hypo 0.285 0.00∗∗

∗∗_{𝑃 < 0.01; ( ): Mean.}

5. Conclusions

Focus Group is utilized in this study for screening the rep-resentative online publishing software (TinTint, Photobook, and Hypo) as the testing software. Usability evaluation of performance measurement is applied to measure the subjects’ Learnability and the number of user errors for the online publishing software and investigate the subjects’ subjective satisfaction with the online publishing software. The results show that the typical tasks for Learnability, except for Storing,

reveal significant difference. For the number of user errors, inputting basic information of works, appending pictures, adjusting pictures, changing type version, and changing pages present significant difference, while the rest do not show statistical significance. Regarding the comparison of overall subjective satisfaction with online publishing software interface, TinTint and Hypo outperform Photobook, but no significant difference appears between TinTint and Hypo. It is expected that the research results could be the reference and evaluation basis for relevant digital industries, and the research model could be broadly applied to usability evaluation of relevant digital contents in other areas of Taiwan for valuable reference.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China for financially supporting this research under Contract no. NSC 101-2410-H-151-021.

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Evaluation and Satisfaction Survey on the Interface Usability of Online Publishing Software

Research Article