
We've Adapted Our Reading Habits to Fit Our Screens, but at a Cost - samclemens
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3048297/evidence/everything-science-knows-about-reading-on-screens
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Gys
"In digital, we can link in different media, images, sound, and other text,
and people can get overwhelmed," explains Andrew Dillon, a professor at the
School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin, "These are
disruptive activities that can carry a cost in terms of attention."

The way the article is presented gives an unintentional (?) perfect example.
Using big gifs dividing the text and serving no other purpose then stop me
from reading the whole article... And there are moving ads as well.

Point well made ;-)

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kazinator
Ironically, I skimmed through this, looking for a key sentence in every
paragraph. Didn't find much of value.

People need to learn to condense their point, ideally down to one small
paragraph or sentence. For instance,

"Without any data to back it up, I have a suspicion that people's reading
skills are suffering because they are used to being flooded with writing in
the digital world, and so they don't read everything from top to bottom."

I have another opinion, which is this:

People are now reading more than ever (and writing). Thirty years ago, the
same types of people wouldn't be reading anything at all, and spend several
hours a day in front of a TV. And they wouldn't be writing text messages, but
rather using the telephone.

The reason people are non-linearly scanning text is not because they are
managing their time poorly. They are managing their time well in the face of
poorly organized, information-sparse rambling.

Most writing out there competing for your attention doesn't deserve it, and in
writing that does deserve your attention, there are actually only small "hot
spots" which do, not everything.

Non-linear reading isn't a _degradation_ in reading skill; it is a valuable
skill in it own right. Schools even teach this to kids: how to skim through
text to get the gist of the content so that you can focus on what is relevant.
(And they taught this before the "digital age".) You need this skill to get
through university. When you're doing research, there are just too many books
and papers to sit there going word by word.

So, skim on, friends! And raise a big TL;DR middle finger to ramblers (like
what I'm becoming here with this comment).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You need one more skill: You need to know when skimming didn't give you
enough.

I see this with my kids. One of them skimmed the chapter in the math book,
then asked me for help with the exercises. My "help" was: "Go back and
actually _read_ the chapter. Don't skim it." And that worked.

It can be hard to tell the difference between "there's nothing there worth my
time" and "there's something there, and I have to read it more thoroughly to
find out what it is." You don't get 100% accuracy at this, but you can (I
think) get somewhat good at it.

~~~
kazinator
You can still trim how much you read when doing chapter exercises. Just start
with the exercises and then search backwards for clues when you're stuck on
something. Some books have a "chapter summary" which serves as a kind of
directory to the details. That is conveniently located between the exercises
and the bulk of the chapter: it practically begs to be traversed in that
direction. :)

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DanielBMarkham
A couple of anecdotes, for what they're worth.

\- I find that if I only consume digital media, over time my ability to deep-
dive into complex works of fiction or non-fiction diminishes. My attention
span gets very short. I want to "pop off" and go consume something else. It
takes a dedicated bit of effort to switch back into real reading mode

\- From looking at my server logs, the average web consumer doesn't get 99% of
whatever you put on the page. People used to say you should design your page
so that somebody driving by in a car could read and understand it. I would go
so far as to design it so that a drunken one-eyed near-sighted person who is
in an argument with their SO could read and understand it while going by at
100 mph. The numbers are not pretty.

\- Multi-purpose devices have but one goal: to get you to consume more
material. The vendors that make them do not care whether you read that new
downloaded book for 5 minutes or 5 hours. They only care that you downloaded
it. Books on the other hand? People who make those want you to consume one
particular work and then share/talk about it. With a book, you and the author
are in this thing together. With a multi-media reader, you're just a
demographic

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tempodox
Those graphic animations make it absolutely impossible for me to read the
article. Must have been done by effing greenhorns. Professionals should know
better.

~~~
privong
I found it somewhat ironic, trying to read the article, "But this style of
reading may come at a cost—Liu noted in his study that sustained attention
seems to decline when people read onscreen rather than on paper" while motion
in my peripheral vision worked to pull my attention away.

~~~
noxToken
Perhaps it's done intentionally? You're reading an article that's telling you
that digital screen reading leaves the user prone to distractions. If they
litter their page with distractions, the user can say, "Yeah, I felt
distracted while reading this very article! Maybe there is something to this!"

Probably not, but you never know.

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bryanlarsen
It's much easier to skim a newspaper than even the best feed reader, IMO, so
it's not like that style of reading is new. I suppose the big difference now
is the proportion of time spent on skimming media like newspapers vs long form
media.

~~~
chrisacree
I agree that the biggest difference is that the web simply has people spending
more time reading skim-worthy content. News/blog articles, forums, and comment
threads make up a significant part of online reading and are naturally much
more skim-able than most books. That's not a bad thing.

The important question is whether, as our deeper reading also goes digital,
our habits of skimming while online will extend to them or not. Habits can be
hard to break.

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zhte415
I find font size and environment a big thing. Everything I read on a website
is from a desk based environment, from home or at work.

Every book I currently read is on the same laptop, but I sit at the back of a
bus, with the PDF font size blown up to 10 words per line, where I can lose
myself without other distractions. I convert every ePub and the like to a PDF
with the formatting I like.

From the article:

>Liu noted in his study that sustained attention seems to decline when people
read onscreen rather than on paper, and that people also spend less time on
in-depth reading.

Sit at the back of bus. No attention towards anywhere else.

> The researchers found that when people read short nonfiction onscreen, their
> understanding of the text suffered because people managed their time poorly
> compared with when they used paper (although paper’s advantage disappeared
> when people were given a fixed amount of time to read the text).

Manage time. Sit at the back of a bus to read, instead of standing on the
subway despite some time saving.

> Other studies have also found costs when people multi-task online

Again, sit at the back of a bus. No online.

Perhaps the public busses where I live are really nice. Actually, they are,
albeit overcrowded at intermediate stops. I intentionally take a slower route
home to have time sitting on the back of the bus to read.

Pumped up font sizes, a touchscreen laptop, and a seat at the back of a bus
are great reading environments. Far better than sitting at home with all the
distractions that makes.

An anecdote: I much prefer pumped up font sizes on an 11" screen than typical
typeset in a handily carried book. And cannot concentrate when trying to read
on a 6" or 7" phone/small tablet screen.

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rffn
I found the article largely unreadable due to all the movement from the
animations. Did the author want to show how bad he can design the screen
reading experience?

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tobico
Seems like this article makes quite a leap from the study results to their
suggestion that everyone reads paper books. Study results:

1\. People reading on a screen are more likely to skim

2\. Skimming reduces comprehension of the material

3\. Reading on paper correlates with better reconstruction of plot

It seems like 1 and 2 taken together are as good an explanation as any for 3.
Given that, I feel like it would be at least worth an experiment to see if
making a conscious effort to avoid skimming would be just as effective as
switching to reading on paper. If so, I think that would be a cheaper and
easier solution to the issue.

~~~
gonzo41
When I was younger and reading on the web, (the days of 28k modems) I didn't
skim as much as a do now. I would put this to my inexperience of reading then
(thinking that everything needed to be read). And that now there is a lot of
crap on the internet. Its hard to sort out the good stuff that deserves
attention. So i skim a lot.

But paper books are king. I tend to move slower through the text and have a
more enjoyable time of it.

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jotm
I agree that we consume more information, probably way too much, but in my
experience, attention to detail and deep comprehension of the material depends
more on how interested in the topic you are.

If I am actually trying to learn something or if I like a story, I'll become
extremely focused on it no matter the medium (even the small smartphone
screens that I usually hate are fine).

But if I'm reading for the sake of reading or to update my knowledge of a
topic or stay up to date with the news, then I'll skim like crazy...

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klunger
The conclusions of this article closely mirror my own experience. I generally
prefer reading a physical book because I am much more likely to remember the
contents afterward. Things I read on a screen somehow feel slippery and less
valuable.

But, how do we reconcile this with the transforming publishing industry? Will
they only publish text books and prose that requires "deep reading" and leave
everything else to be digitized?

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tammer
While the difference between skimming and thorough reading is obvious, I think
the finding at the bottom has some merit. Thinking back on books I've read on
print vs ones I've only read on screens, I can certainly remember the
chronology of paper books better. Perhaps that is due to the physicality of
pages gradually accumulating on the left side.

I feel like this has some definite implications for UI design - is blankness
with text really the best way to convey an ebook?

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edgarvaldes
Reader View mode on FF, or any other addon/bookmarklet, works great when I
really want to focus on an article.

