A Study on Problems Encountered by Students and Their Causes When Learning About E-Book Production Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process †

Many colleges’ graphic design departments have created curriculums related to digital publishing. While digital reading has become popular and various technologies of e-book production are mature, there are urgent demands to strategically and systematically cultivate professionals for the digital content industries. Thus, this research was to examine the problems associated with e-book production and their causes for future curriculum design. A literature review of college teaching courses in design-related departments was conducted, and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied with twelve senior digital publishing practitioners. The results showed that “interactive setting” was the most common problem. The next most common problems were “color labeling” and “graphic setting”. In-depth interviews with seven experts which were selected from technical and vocational colleges and the digital publishing industry revealed the causes of these problems. The reasons of mistakes were categorized into 54 causes for the seven most common problem categories. Among the causes of “interactive setting” errors, “setting the media playback controller” happened most frequently.