Hot answers tagged readability
37
The book On Writing Well (a great book,) suggests making things like these plural. In the book, he talks about how to avoid the gender problem when talking about men/women. (By calling them people.) For example, when talking about a specific user, instead of saying "when he clicks on the button..." you'd say "when they click on the button...", or the passive ...
31
I'd say the best two options are:
1) Display terms and conditions as long plain legalese text as usual, in a left hand column, but then summarise it in much shorter, friendlier, simpler text on the right. 500px.com does this really well:
2) Format the text in a legible manner. Separate it into linked sections with proper headings, good typography and ...
23
You could consider changing the wording of the values:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
16
Yes. Jakob Nielsen did a study many years ago and found that users like reading text that's easily scannable.
Scanning can save users time. During
the study, 15 participants always
approached unfamiliar Web text by
trying to scan it before reading it.
Only 3 participants started reading
text word by word, from the top of the
page to the ...
16
I don't deal in print, but I have read quite a bit about fonts in the past.
Recent studies have shown that serif vs. sans serif on a computer display is not really what affects readability, even at lower resolutions. Print, however, is a different matter. The studies consistently indicate that in print, serif based fonts are easier to read. That said, some ...
16
There is no reason to force a user to read the terms and conditions first. It is not a legal requirement and it doesn't improve the UX.
Don't do it.
Legally they simply have to agree to the terms and conditions, and if they choose not to read them, then that is their problem.
UX wise, what part of the experience are you trying to improve by doing this? ...
10
For what it's worth - I tried a variety of timings myself and ended up at 3200ms for a two line message of up to about 20 words. But I also place a small dot (10px diameter) to the left, which is coloured according to message type (eg red/error, blue/info, orange/warning) and which fades out over the 3200ms. When the fade gets to 100%, the message itself ...
10
I have been researching over the years about the same thing (I want to write a kids book)
I'm afraid I don't have links for you, just pointers:
Small chunks of text at a time (4-5 lines, 7-9 words)
The font should be bigger than the text here. 14pt perhaps.
White space. Gutter space. White area all around the text and between chunks.
Pictures if you can. ...
10
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
In Albania, Belgium, Bosnia, Estonia, France, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and much of Latin Europe as well as
French Canada: 1 234 567,89 (In Spain, in handwriting it is also
common to use an upper comma: 1.234.567'89)
In Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, ...
9
I've been scolded for using too much bold in SO questions, so I learned that...
Using too much bold disrupts your natural reading rhythm,
but some italics and bold can be helpful in appropriate quantities.
If your text contains a lot of highlighting or bold, consider breaking it up into bulleted lists.
9
If the user can't get this information from context, repeat it.
Perhaps put less emphasis on it (eg. don't make the text "Updated" bold), but do repeat it so the user has a local context right next to the data to decode what it means.
There's no 'standard' for this as it is, yet we're over with map legends in 2012.
For a repeated label, it's enough to ...
9
Note that "I am" is also not grammatical if two people are operating the machine as a pair.
Quite simply
Choose destination for image: {User, Administrator, Manager}
Send image to: {User, Administrator, Manager}
Send image to User is not bad grammar. Rather, it is an example of the condensed dialect of English that is used in newspaper headlines and ...
9
A lot depends on your audience and your product, but in general the term "Millions of colours" isn't particularly helpful. Do you mean 2 million or 786 million?
If you're selling a new DSLR camera, the common jargon is 12-bit, 14-bit, etc. and not the number of colours - so that is what you should stick to.
If you're talking about software (especially ...
8
Place the ingredients above the instructions, possibly even in the top-corner of each page so that you can see the ingredients easily when flicking through the book. Cooking books aren't only used when the recipe is being cooked but when it's being researched. By having the ingredients at the top of the instructions they are consistently in the same place ...
8
Icons can improve readability and findability in sense that users, that a familiar with interface, usually don’t read the labels in common way, but search for visual markers, that help identify item.
It happens due to visual form, that we percieve before “read” — for instance, in peripheral vision we don’t read, only percieve the form and colour of item, so ...
8
Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and similar documents are there primarily for legal reasons, not UX ones. So the reason that they are usually terrible to read is that they are written in legaleses rather than human speak.
A good alternative is to add additional explanations in human speak next to the legalese. StackExchange is a good example to ...
8
CheckMyColours.com uses the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) contrast tests.
The validity of the tests is something to bring up with WCAG rather than checkmycolours.com.
I am unaware of the WCAG providing the research supporting their contrast ratio standards. However, my experience with those standards is that they are fairly lax. I've ...
7
I will answer this as an avid hobby cook, my experience with design and usability is beginner to intermediate, but on the lower side in this community.
The answer is: I do not care if it is above, below, or to the side. The main concern is to be able to see the list at a glance. It should be recognizable as its own module, separate from the instructions, ...
7
The W3C has explicit guidelines for web content accessability, including contrast. You can compare color values to their ratio and tell the user if their color choices are likely inaccessible/unreadable.
The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
Note there are exceptions and some good guidance in the full ...
7
Back to the question where the answer is yes, it improves readability, at least if you listen to Jakob Nielsen who (yet again) wrote an article on 113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability where #112 says:
112) Use a thousands separator appropriate to your locale for numbers that have five or more digits. For example, in the United States, fifty-three ...
7
Let me preface my answer by saying the evidence is all over the place on this topic. It seems prudent to suggest that choice of typeface has a relatively minor effect on reading speed or legibility given our current understanding.
There's a section on the Wikipedia page for Serif that seems to directly address the question:
Serifed fonts are widely used ...
7
Your proposed solution also introduces a jump. If it's 20 June 2013, and I see a post dated “22 June”, I'm going to think “June this year”, and then do a double take because that's still into the future. When it's June 2013, all posts from June 2012 should be marked “June '12”. As the end of the month approaches, it may be good to mark posts from July as ...
7
I would describe the options in terms of "quality", with technical footnotes. This teaches the user at a high level what a phrase like 16 bit vs 32 bit means. It also provides the information for more technically minded users to get exactly what they want.
Color Example:
Low Quality (8 bit)
Medium Quality (16 bit)
High Quality (32 bit)
Audio Example:
...
6
I'd say this perfectly acceptable. I typically do the same thing when prompting a user to select one or more items. I just use the plural of the word, rather than add a (s) at the end. The idea here is to make it easier for the user to read and understand the label. If making it more grammatically correct makes it more confusing or more cumbersome for the ...
6
As far as I remember, this is because of well-known Hot Coffee Lawsuit against McDonalds.
Judge Robert H. Scott who presided over this case stated:
...knowing the risk of harm,
the evidence and testimony would indicate that
McDonald’s consciously made no serious effort to
warn its consumers by placing just the most simple,
adequate warning on ...
6
If you look at most languages they are from left to right and the basic concept of a chat is about mutual interaction based upon the person's previous response. Hence, your responses will be driven by the response of your chat partner and hence his response is placed on the left and your response on the right since your response is driven by what he has ...
5
If you look at the dictionary definitions, it doesn't seem like a lot of distinction between the two:
Legibility - Also called visibility. Typography. the quality of type that affects the perceptibility of a word, line, or paragraph of printed matter.
Readability - Typography . the property of type that affects the ease with which ...
5
How well a font displays on web depends on how much hinting information it has had:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting
Font hinting takes a tremendous amount of time to do as the font must be adjusted at each size. The reason Arial, Verdana and other older fonts always display well is because they have been meticulously hinted. Verdana has a ...
5
I would not remove the capital letters.
Proper casing of text should not be considered to be a distraction, and capital letters help with the comprehension of text. I feel the absence of expected capitals would amount to more of a distraction as users pause to wonder where the capital letters went.
A comprehension example: Is your name "de slonde", "desl ...
5
Vertical lists are better because they are easier to scan. If you draw a line from 1 -> 2 -> 3 in your examples, you will see how much work the eye has to zig-zag through your second example.
See this related question about alphabetical lists and the top answer for more discussion.
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