Originally Posted by djgreedo
Using screen numbers as pages is not looking backwards to a paper book, it's using a well-established way of tracking your progress on a device that actually works in the same way as a paper book (i.e. a screen is equivalent to a page).
We don't measure long distances in metres, we measure in kilometres (or miles) because that suits the usual numbers we deal with. People are better at dealing with numbers below 1000 (that's why we moved on from megabytes to gigabytes to terabytes). When numbers start to get lots of zeroes people can't fully intuit their meaning.
Do you also think the average consumer would prefer locations over screen numbers? Would they understand locations immediately (in a way that they can use and rely on them immediately)? I don't think so; and I would be very surprised if the concept of screen numbers confused anybody.
Although the maths required is very simple, the average person can intuitively estimate '34 of 157' much better than '457 of 3120'.
|