The Effect of Mobile User Interface Design on Comic Reading Performance

For decades, the comic industry has continuously reached out to more readers with the help of smartphones. Many comic books have increasingly transformed from physical to digital versions. Even though the size of smartphones nowadays is expanding, the scanned comic pages must fit the screen. The current text and image size are more difficult to read and require users to zoom in or frequently scroll. In this study, researchers wanted to find out how to redesign the online comic format on the phone to be more efficient. The variables were the number of columns, turning page interactions, and navigations with the arrow button and thumbnail. The researchers also  recognized the importance of the finger reach area. Twenty subjects who already had the online comic on the phone reading experience participated in this experiment. The results show that the two-column layout satisfies the participants’ reading size the most. Another result shows that scrolling the page is faster than swiping across the screen. Moreover, the participants interacted with the arrow navigation faster than the thumbnail. These results will benefit the future designs of mobile user interfaces to enhance the comic reading performance and pleasure levels.