Ergonomics of digital documents

The problem of digital document ergonomics is a crucial one, and one that responds to users' frequent dissatisfaction with the use of this type of document. The design of digital documents is often based on empirical considerations derived from know-how acquired with the paper medium. However, an abundance of literature, admittedly scattered across different fields of research, concerns the effects of factors in the presentation of information on screen, at both perceptual and cognitive levels. We present here a review of the main findings and their implications for the design of digital documents.

Digital documents offer many ways of organizing, presenting and accessing information. A relevant use of these options by authors requires a good knowledge of the effects these choices have on the cognitive representation and processing done by the user. This approach to digital documents, based on the concept of mental representation, provides a framework for analyzing the structures and signals (or organizers) specific to this type of writing.

The aim of this article is therefore to help designers improve the ergonomics of digital documents on the basis of recommendations founded on experimental results. To this end, wherever possible, we accompany current theoretical considerations with practical recommendations for designers. In the case of practical recommendations, we do not present the experiments from which they are derived, but indicate the references so that the reader can refer to them. The preferred framework for applying these recommendations is that of technical or didactic documents.