Wichita State Usability News

Posted: May 10, 2006

Some interesting news on usability, especially as it relates to fonts from Wichita State.

Links:
Main Site
Font Comparison, which size and type are ‘best’?

The last article has some very interesting data as it relates to prettiness, readability, and perception of a site based upon the fonts.

Here’s the conclusion if you’re too lazy to read the entire doc:

Several observations can be made regarding the examined font types. First, no significant differences in reading efficiency were detected between the font types at any size. There were, however, significant differences in reading time. Generally, Times and Arial were read faster than Courier, Schoolbook, and Georgia. Fonts at the 12-point size were read faster than fonts at the 10-point size. In addition, a font type x size interaction was found for the perception of font legibility. In general, however, Arial, Courier, and Georgia were perceived as the most legible.

For font attractiveness, Georgia was perceived as being more attractive than Arial, Courier, and Comic, while Times was perceived as more attractive than Courier. This contrasts with participants’ general preference for a particular font type. Overall, Verdana was the most preferred font, while Times was the least preferred. Thus it seems that the Georgia and Times serif fonts are considered more attractive, but they are generally less preferred. Of the fonts studied, Verdana appears to be the best overall font choice. Besides being the most preferred, it was read fairly quickly and was perceived as being legible.

As with all studies that examine reading performance, caution should be made in generalizing these outcomes to other font types. Many factors should be taken into account, such as individual text characteristics, the text size, the line and character spacing, the computer settings, as well as the user characteristics.