Careful considerations in designing and organizing information for restaurant point-of-sale (POS) systems can affect user experience. Unfortunately, usability guidelines are sparse for these systems. Applications from other studies, such as categorical organization and F-shape, are implemented in an experimental interface as a starting point of discussion. A control interface was designed after the default version of NCR Aloha’s POS program: Aloha Table Service. Novice and expert order taking strategies were also observed to compare input differences. This study examined selection time, total time, and selection accuracy across both order and interface types. The results show that time and number of key presses are significantly reduced under the treatment interface, and that teaching expert order taking strategies to novice users may help reduce cognitive load.

Readability formulas are used widely in education, and increasingly in business and government. Over 30 years of research on more than 200 readability formulas has demonstrated moderate to strong predictive correlations with reading comprehension. In this study, five well-known readability formulas correlated highly with each other when applied to selected recent historical articles (N = 22) from two music education research journals. The mean level of difficulty (readability) for all 22 articles was grade 14.04, near the beginning of the second year of college. Since research shows that most people read below their highest completed school grade and also prefer easier materials, this is probably an appropriate level of difficulty for the presumptive readers of these two journals (i.e., holders of undergraduate and graduate degrees). Professors, librarians, and others responsible for guiding students toward reading material at appropriate levels of readability could benefit from these results.

Poster about meeting the academic and cultural needs of international students at the Arizona State University Libraries and the University of Arizona Libraries. The poster presentation focuses on:

1. Strategies to promote information literacy skills of international students in the two university libraries.
2. What the libraries are doing to improve services to meet the needs and encourage library use among international students.
3. Partnerships that have been established with other academic departments or institutions.