Swarts Jason, Vannorman Maggie
Department of English, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
J Vet Med Educ. 2008 Spring;35(1):118-28. doi: 10.3138/jvme.35.1.118.
Until recently, personal digital assistants (PDAs) have been ignominiously characterized as a solution without a problem. To many, they were glorified versions of calendars, address books, notepads, and calculators that appeared only minimally more useful than their paper predecessors. Today's PDAs cater to a wider range of mobile computing needs, especially in the veterinary field, where they support mobile, information-centric work. Despite the PDA's resurgent popularity, hardware constraints limit its wide-scale integration. Most notably, small screen sizes limit the PDA designers who compose texts, videos, and images for PDA delivery. This article addresses the problem of designing for small screens by re-characterizing the issue as an information design problem rather than a hardware problem. By analyzing how fourth-year students in a veterinary medicine program use their PDAs in their clinical education, we offer suggestions for designing information to meet their needs.
直到最近，个人数字助理（PDA）一直被不光彩地描述为一种没有问题的解决方案。对许多人来说，它们是日历、通讯录、记事本和计算器的升级版，只是比它们的纸质前身稍微有用一点。如今的PDA满足了更广泛的移动计算需求，尤其是在兽医领域，它们支持以信息为中心的移动工作。尽管PDA再度流行起来，但硬件限制阻碍了它的广泛集成。最明显的是，小屏幕尺寸限制了为PDA制作文本、视频和图像的设计师。本文通过将该问题重新定义为信息设计问题而非硬件问题，来探讨小屏幕设计问题。通过分析兽医学专业四年级学生在临床教育中如何使用他们的PDA，我们为设计满足他们需求的信息提供了建议。
