Questions tagged [readability]
The ease in which text can be understood (based on content, not formatting). Readability is not to be confused with legibility, which is the ease with which text can be read (based on formatting, not content).
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Negative Effects on UX from Text on Images [duplicate]
Jakob Nielsen in "Eyetracking Web Usability," recommends against placing text on top of images or textured background in advertisements because only 35% of people will look at it.
Is there any other ...
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Price Decimals on eCommerce Site
About a third of products do not have rounded numbers ($80.00).
Should I display decimals for them?
I am hesitant between keeping a consistent experience
$143.99, $80.00, $23.12
and reducing the ...
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Why are image captions so compelling that they get read 300% more than body copy?
"Captions under images are read on average 300% more than the body copy itself". http://blog.kissmetrics.com/shocking-truth-about-graphics/
My research tells me this finding comes from David Ogilvy, ...
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Is there any research with respect to how font-weight affects readability?
Is there any research with respect to how font-weight affects readability?
Obviously, there is some relation there, but I'm struggling to make a decision based on any facts.
I created a jsFiddle ...
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Comments at the heart of a document
Context
I just read the amazing question Emerging UI trend: comments in the margin - pros and cons?. I noticed this trend of putting the comments on the side of the documents (Google Docs is maybe the ...
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Studies about negative readability
I've been requested to design a dark interface which spreads a little light as possible. I'm interested in academic studies / researches about white text on black background.
Is it really tough to ...
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Studies about how many lines from a testimonial a user will read on home page
I am building a home page for one of our products and researching how to integrate testimonial section. In my first prototype, I have 3 sentences which makes 6 lines on a tablet.
My thought is that ...
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Single-character convention for weekdays?
In the ever challenging pursuit of simplifying visuals for Users, an issue came up while web developing.
It is a relative simple issue: I want to offer Users a selection for weekdays using only one ...
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Indicate weekdays vs weekend
I have blocks representing weeks, and above each week the dates for the whole week are displayed, i.e.
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
____________________
| |
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
...
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Better alternative for readonly information in input box
I have this form where the topmost row (File #, Patient & Med.Aid) is readonly. Input boxes in this row are readonly and the cursor turns to
"banned" icon on hovering those fields. I can't find a ...
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Allow users to change text and background color in my web app?
Background: I'm building a basic web app that's targeted toward (wait for it) academics. The app is entirely text-driven, and will not involve any images. It will incorporate some databases and longer ...
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How to reference (and provide links to) online content in offline media?
Provided that print publications produced in-house and "physical" advertisements have to reference or "link" to online content, what is an accessible (in broader sense) and user-friendly way to do so?
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What's the ideal length of a paragraph
We all know what the ideal number of characters is for a line, however I haven't been able to find any guides on the number of lines that provide the best readability.
I understand this is a bit ...
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Do large format books make a substantial improvement?
In the last several years I've seen larger format books alongside the familiar pocket paperbacks. Sometimes these are taller, sometimes they are wider, and sometimes both. I've wound up with these in ...
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What's the most logical place for a read more link?
I've designed a website with a blog section. My mates and I fail to come to an agreement.
My opinion : Left
I think it's better to place it on the left according some studies with heat map and ...
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Website readability vs performance vs experience
I am running a page that utilizes an off-canvas design pattern for the main menu on small screens. Using progressive enhancement, I use CSS transformations instead of position absolute to show/hide ...
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Is there a definitive answer to the line length readability question in the context of programming code
Is there is any definitive research that attempts to answer what character counts make the most human readable line lengths for programming code (typically mono-spaced font, high liklihood of small ...
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Is white text on dark background better for usability on smartphone / tablet keyboards than the reverse?
Which is a better and usable Smart Phone or Tablet keyboard?
White / light characters on Black / Dark keys on the keyboard layout.
Black / Dark Grey text on the white / light grey colour keys layout.
...
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What are your thoughts on using iconography to represent complex ideas?
I think we're all aware that iconography is most effective when communicating simple/established/conventional ideas that can be understood without any words at all - like search, print, share, etc. ...
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How much does vision change as we age?
I'd like to share with my web design team some specific, quantitative data on just how much visual ability changes, even as young as 40 years old. This is to help drive home the need for adequate ...
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The "Time to read" feature, when is it good and how to implement it?
Recently I've seen some sites that tell how much time it takes you to red an article on it, most notably the incredible medium.com (which I consider master of UX).
I have two questions rerading this ...
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Shading grouped table rows
Currently, I am working on a mobile web application which displays all substitutions for each class in my school. To make this substitution list (varying between 5 to 60 entries) easier to parse, I ...
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Best way to layout information to optimize readability
The application I am designing is a large table of information that is updating in real time. The rows in the table are live orders in the companies system, our users scan through the list items, ...
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Which icons are the easiest to read, solid or hollow?
With io7, Apple made a switch in the tabbars to icons that for the most part are line based. In other places, such as their app icons they are using mostly solid icons. That made me wonder if there is ...
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Which map background color is best (from the perspective of ergonomics at the workplace)?
Which map background color (white, black, other?) is best from the perspective of ergonomics at the workplace? Certainly aspects play a role such as reflections, tiredness of the eyes, contrast and ...
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What is the best way to indicate read-only cells within a table?
I have many tables, actually data grids, where most of the cells will be editable, but some may not depending on the users permissions. I am thinking of using light gray backgrounds on the read-only ...
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Displaying domain name or URL that is long or contains many words
2 related problems:
I have a domain name that is quite long. e.g. www.expertscientificanalysis.com I have another domain that is not neccesarily long but made up of many words. e.g. www....
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Small tables on big screens
I have a little problem, responsive design and tables with only 3-4 columns, so the tables can't be 100% of the width, because that would result in way too much white space between the columns and ...
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What colour scheme changes can i apply to my blog to increase the readability of the text? [closed]
http://nomad.so/
What colour scheme changes can i apply to my blog (above) to increase the contrast of the text? i don't really want to change the overall design, just tweak the colours to improve ...
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How to display an error log/report for user?
My web application is supposed to display the trace and a error report after process and shows for each uploaded files all the errors and operations accomplished. Here's a simplified and really ...
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What default font to choose for desktop applications?
Finding the right font for an application seems to be an art.
There seem to be many standards.
Arial seems to be used in most applications I have seen,
Segoe UI is the standard for Microsoft Windows ...
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Dark screens in cars
I am a designer just preparing an app for the "in car" area.
Normally we have a bunch of colors to use and we usually use dark colors on a light background. Now our client came up with some question ...
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Width of visual field of the sharp focus (Macula) area of the retina at average distance from screen
Does any one have any information about the width of the sharp focal area of the retina (the Macula)? I am trying to get an understanding of how this could impact the ideal length for a line of copy.
...
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Book reading apps vs news reading app - level of text customization?
Book reading apps like iBooks, Kobo, Kindle etc. allow the user to change the background, foreground (most of these apps offer white, sepia and night themes), font face, font size, and even screen ...
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Multi-column articles
I just came across this article by Paul Lewis. The first thing I noticed was the multi-column layout.
It's great that people are trying to break the usage of overused templates for articles/blogs, ...
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What is the validity of contrast and colours tests?
I just ran a contrast and colour test (using checkmycolours.com in this case) on our corporate site (www.dotblue.net; if you care) and it reports quite some failures. However, I explicitly optimized ...
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"Millions of colors" vs "24-bit": should technical concepts be simplified to ease understanding at the cost of precision?
Macs indicate 24-bit color depth by using the term "millions of colors", while Windows calls it "24-bit" or "32-bit". (I'm aware that Windows "32-bit" color simply adds an alpha channel that doesn't ...
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Hovering over an element to raise opacity
I'm working on a site where we display testimonials on the side of the page. We don't want these to be the main point of interest, so we dimmed the opacity, and on hover it goes to full opacity. We ...
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Is it better to have groups of content stacked vertically or horizontally?
I have groups of content and I can stack them vertically in 100% width rows or horizontally (even-width columns).
Since the user for English language web sites will read left-to-right and the and ...
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Dyslexia friendly colors for wider audience?
I have met few dyslexic people and asked them about their reading style.
Some of them said that typing on black key board with white writing is easier for them, it helps them identify the shape of ...
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What's the best way to make a user read terms and conditions before continuing a form?
What's the best way to make a user read terms and conditions before continuing a form?
Structure of Form:
Label1 [Textbox]
Label2 [Textbox]
Terms and Conditions [Textarea]
Checkbox ["I agree to the ...
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What's more readable, reading an ordered list vertically or horizontally? [duplicate]
For example, I have a numbered list, what is easier for an average user to read ?
Vertically
[1] [5]
[2] [6]
[3] [7]
[4] [8]
OR
Horizontally
[1] [2]
[3] [4]
[5] [6]
[7] [8]
......
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Chat arrangement question: Left or right?
I'm building a small chat. Now I see but in other chats (whatsapp, facebook mobile chat, sms ...) that the arrangement is always the same:
Left: the chat partner.
right: myself
Why is that?
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If nobody reads Privacy Policies or Terms and Conditions, why not change them?
Once I read that if you were to read all the Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and similar documents that you ideally need to read before using software or online services in a given year, you'd ...
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Relationship between font-size and width of container
Are there any studies done which tell us the relationship between the font size and the optimal width of the container they are in?
For example, 12px font size is going to be too small in a container ...
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Mixed case vs all lower case...Which is more readable?
A graphic designer I hired to do my company's collateral (a very accomplished and successful designer) told me once that all lower case is often more readable than mixed case. As an example she made ...
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Any usability studies of the readability of Open Sans?
I like the look of Open Sans, but I've heard anecdotes of people having trouble reading it. For example on the Wordpress post about it, most are praising it, but a few people are quite negative:
I ...
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When should a year be added to a timestamp?
Stack Exchange uses relative timestamps to indicate when an action occurred; a question was asked, edit was made etc. This is done as far back as "2 days ago"; anything prior to exactly 48 hours ago ...
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How useful is this coffee cup "hot contents" warning?
I came across this on Dan Pink's blog.
This caption on a coffee cup is supposed to serve as a warning sign to caution people that the coffee is hot and care must be taken to avoid burns.
The problem ...
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Can you sacrifice grammar to keep instructions simple, specifically when using a(n)?
Because of the way the form is written, step-by-step in first person, it is necessary to put the a(n) to keep them grammatically correct for the Administrator case. However I feel like it makes the ...
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