ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: With the rapid development of handheld devices and the digitalization of images and audio, many things can be accomplished anywhere with ubiquitous computing technology. Recently, e-readers received much attention from not only the general public but also the human-computer interface (HCI) community. Within the extensive literature on usability of e-readers, relatively little effort has been done on the actual needs and behavior of users. Users were asked to provide feedback on their preference for an existing e-reader over the traditional printed books, but little about the users’ needs was addressed. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to discover and discuss the users’ needs for an e-reader in higher education and to investigate the factors influencing users’ acceptance. The primary research questions to be addressed in this paper are user research and technology adoption. Online survey, contextual inquiry technique and in-depth interview are applied in this research. After quantitative and qualitative data analysis, we then provide a conceptual design of e-readers for higher educational uses.
