A diary study of children's user experience with EBooks using flow theory as framework

Abstract

This paper describes a diary study aimed at evaluating the User Experience (UX) of 7 to 12 years old children when interacting with eBooks. The goal was to understand whether, in a context of leisure reading, enhanced eBooks provide a better reading experience than basic eBooks. We took inspiration from Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory to define a benchmark for evaluating the reading experience, and then by means of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and an adapted version of the Flow Short Scale (FKS) we investigated and collected data on the reading experience of two groups of children: one group read an enhanced eBook while the other read a basic version of the same eBook. Following a mixedmethod approach, with quantitative analysis we verified whether participants who read the enhanced eBook had a better reading experience, while with qualitative analysis we tried to understand why. The results showed that interactive and multimedia enrichments (readaloud narration in particular) had a positive effect on children's experience with the enhanced eBook.