Flat Touch-screen Electronic Media Reading Grid Design Exploration

As the most remarkable representation of the developing trend of new media products,the tablet touching devices, when used for reading (i.e., e-reader), has been somehowbounded by the grid system, which was originally designed for paper books presentation.This limitation has led the reading function of tablet touching devices to be just analternative version of "real books". However, once the traditional stereotype of gridsystem has been broke, the e-readers could be turned into a brand new stage for unlimitedexpression possibilities, much more than we expected.Currently, the popularity of e-readers and the related resource allocation has beendeveloping rapidly. In terms of theoretical development, however, there has not been astandardized grid system specifically designed for the tablet touching devices, which hasled both the form and the function of electronic reading to be fixed in the traditionalreading pattern. Thus, innovation of grid standards, including the update of hardware andsoftware, is believed to be able to affect electronic reading greatly. The current study hasreviewed various forms of electronic reading styles over the world. Different grid systemshas been analyzed and compared to investigate a new way to enable the reader to improvethe reading experience. Various methods have been applied to achieve this goal:1) The author used eye tracking technique to investigate the attention shift and thehotspot area on the device during the reading process.2) By analyzing the data obtained by eye tracking (distribution, stacking, filtering,etc), the author attempted to identify specific rules for grid designing which couldfit the characteristic of the tablet touching devices to the best extent.3) Based on the results of eye-tracking analyze as well as the measure of userexperience, different possibilities were discussed to draw the final conclusion.