Abstract
In the era of information overabundance, the amount of content available to read and need to read may easily exceed what readers can handle on their own. The problem of information overload can be exacerbated when encountering language barriers. In exploration of methods for improving reading efficiency when dealing with second language content, we consider that annotations can play an important role in interface design. Here, we present studies that examine the effects of human-generated annotations as reading support for second language articles. In the first two studies, we explore the strategy of using images as a secondary and supplementary medium to visualize keywords within second-language articles as well as machine-translated passages. Results of study 1 indicated that with semantic-related pictures, readers reached significant higher comprehension in the long term, comparing to traditional reading and learning strategies (e.g. Chinese definitions as support). In study 2, we found that region-of-interest annotated pictures can better support readers’ subjective comprehension than using raw pictures as support. The findings suggest an alternative design of applying pictures as a supplementary resource in textual comprehension. After study 1 and study 2, we begin to investigate how readers perceived annotation support generated from other readers. In study 3, we apply crowdsourcing technique to simulate the social environment and visualize the important part of article in order to improve readers’ reading efficiency. Through a series of studies, we propose a reading system design that is developed based on the design implication and guidelines from the findings, to work towards the goal of crossing language barriers.