Usability lesson of the day II
- Published April 19th, 2007 in Usability
Serif fonts are great for reading long texts. Sans-serif fonts are good for reading long texts.
It’s quite a pain reading long texts written in Verdana or Arial. Perhaps the greatest flaw of Google Docs is having a sans-serif font by default. It may seem odd me pointing out Microsoft as a good example, but they chose Times New Roman as Word’s default font for a reason!
If you don’t think the serifs do any difference, print a report in Arial and in Times New Roman and read it. It makes a lot of difference!
Actually, that is only true for printed text. Sans-Serif fonts are better for screens because serifs are not translated correctly to a pixel base.
Some evidence: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm
Anyway, it’s always good to see someone taking an interest on Usability. Why don’t you join “Associação Portuguesa de Profissionais de Usabilidade” at www.usabilidade.org to learn more?
You do make a valid point, but as you say, it only applies to printed text. Sans-Serif fonts are better for screens because serifs are not translated correctly to a pixel base.
Some evidence: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm
Anyway, it’s always good to see someone taking an interest on Usability. Why don’t you join “Associação Portuguesa de Profissionais de Usabilidade” at www.usabilidade.org to learn more?
Bruno,
Yes, I think I’ll be joining the association whenever I get back to Portugal. Until then I’m attending some Seminars at Stanford and some tech talks at Google and Yahoo :-)
Regarding the font issue, my anedoctal evidence shows otherwise. It’s not a scientific explanation but Usability is everything but exact science. I can’t stand reading long texts in Arial being in online on printed. Verdana and Tahoma are quite acceptable for online reading but I still prefer serif fonts over anything else for lengthy texts.
“It may seem odd me pointing out Microsoft as a good example, but they chose Times New Roman as Word’s default font for a reason!”
In Word 2007 the default font is a sans-serif font (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri).
Oh, and if you’re into usability so much why are you using a blink tag ? That’s deprecated you know ? Screen readers won’t like that :p
Well, the web was never meant for reading lenghty texts, so yes, I agree that Arial is difficult to read in both ways. But for small texts online (the equivalent to a printed page) Arial is OK.