Learning more from harder-to-read fonts?

[Smith, Susan N - (snsmith)]

Hi,
I'm a teacher and have a few weeks to read what I want for a change. I came across this study (link to story about it, and the actual study, below).


1. In the first study, the test group read items in Bodoni MT italic 60% gray scale or Comic Sans 12 point 60% gray scale. The control group read Arial 16-point.



2. In the second study, high school teachers sent their learning materials to the study, and œ were made the test groups read things in Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva, or Comic Sans italicized in 12-point. Alternatively, some materials were copied by moving the paper up and down while copying when electronic docs were unavailable. The control group was left in the fonts the teachers themselves chose; those fonts are unnamed.


This is one of the study's conclusions:
This study demonstrated that student retention of material across a wide range of subjects (science and
humanities classes) and difficulty levels (regular, Honors and Advanced Placement) can be significantly improved
in naturalistic settings by presenting reading material in a format that is slightly harder to read. While disfluency
appears to operate as a desirable difficulty, presumably engendering deeper processing strategies (c.f. Alter et al.,
2007), the effect is driven by a surface feature that prima facie has nothing to do with semantic processing.

The authors point out that the retention was only for 15 minutes, so there may be less pronounced difference in longer terms.

Anyway, it seems odd to me on many, many levels-I wouldn't consider reading Arial 16 on a paper as a "fluent" choice. Someone found that a good font has about 70 or fewer characters in a line (Schriver's Dynamics in Document Design, p. 263). They also don't mention leading. They don't cite reasons that Arial 16 point was used, either.

I'd be interested in what Info-D folk think of this kind of study. I am sometimes amazed at how blithely unaware some fields are about design.

Thanks,

Sue Smith

Economist Article about the Study:
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf

Actual Study
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf

[Charles Foster]

Dear Sue

I'm disappointed that no one else has commented on your post! There
used to be a number of experts in this Cafe, but things have gone
very quiet over the last couple of years, so perhaps they have moved
onto other places for discussion.

I think the problem for information designers with studies like this
is that they run so directly against our own instincts and training.
For the most part, we spend our time trying to make text more easy to
read and thereby more useable by our clients. The whole notion of
disfluency -- of making something less fluent, less useable and more
ugly –– is an anathema, and sounds like something cooked up by
academics rather than practitioners. I'm afraid that I simply cannot
accept that the production of any sort of teaching material in Comic
Sans, Hattenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva is a good idea.

There have been sporadic discussions in this Cafe down the years
about what fonts are best for reading. They have all petered out
because as someone always indicates there are so many variables
involved -- size, line length, leading, spacing, colour etc etc --
that it is impossible to make a set of rules.

Anyway, FWIW, those are my views. I don't have time to write a longer
post at the moment, but I wanted to let you know that at least one
person had read your original contribution and taken the trouble to
look up the reference.

By the way, you have posted the link to the Princeton article twice,
and omitted the link to the one in the Economist.

best wishes

Charles Foster


--------------------------------------
Charles Foster

Hi,
I’m a teacher and have a few weeks to read what I want for a
change. I came across this study (link to story about it, and the
actual study, below).
1. In the first study, the test group read items in Bodoni MT
italic 60% gray scale or Comic Sans 12 point 60% gray scale. The
control group read Arial 16-point.
2. In the second study, high school teachers sent their
learning materials to the study, and œ were made the test groups
read things in Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva, or Comic Sans
italicized in 12-point. Alternatively, some materials were copied
by moving the paper up and down while copying when electronic docs
were unavailable. The control group was left in the fonts the
teachers themselves chose; those fonts are unnamed.
This study demonstrated that student retention of material across a
wide range of subjects (science and
humanities classes) and difficulty levels (regular, Honors and
Advanced Placement) can be significantly improved
in naturalistic settings by presenting reading material in a format
that is slightly harder to read. While disfluency
appears to operate as a desirable difficulty, presumably
engendering deeper processing strategies (c.f. Alter et al.,
2007), the effect is driven by a surface feature that prima facie
has nothing to do with semantic processing.
The authors point out that the retention was only for 15 minutes,
so there may be less pronounced difference in longer terms.
Anyway, it seems odd to me on many, many levels—I wouldn’t consider
reading Arial 16 on a paper as a “fluent” choice. Someone found
that a good font has about 70 or fewer characters in a line
(Schriver’s Dynamics in Document Design, p. 263). They also don’t
mention leading. They don’t cite reasons that Arial 16 point was
used, either.
I’d be interested in what Info-D folk think of this kind of study.
I am sometimes amazed at how blithely unaware some fields are about
design.
Thanks,
Sue Smith
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-
Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
Actual Study
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-
Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
___________________________________________________________________
http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe
http://InformationDesign.org
___________________________________________________________________

[Jorge Frascara]

Dear Susan,

I do believe that if something involves a heel of an effort you are more
likely to remember it. However, one of the basic premises is that people not
involved in a test, but freely able to choose to read or not to read, give
up reading quite easily if the text does not appear easy to read.

I also believe that one has to consider the effort a peroson has to deply
and the energy that that takes. Fatigue in the workplace is an issue. If I
were to design hospital forms that are difficult to fill up, maybe people
will pay more attention, but at the end of the day they will be exhausted.

There is more to reading than reading and remembering. If I were to have to
read a text set in one of those fonts you emntion, I would feel outraged, so
that in addition to my effort I would have to digest my anger, that will
accumulate with my perceptual difficulties to make it finally a hellish
experience.

So, here you have my grain of salt.

best wishes

Jorge Frascara

Post by Charles Foster
Dear Sue
I'm disappointed that no one else has commented on your post! There used to
be a number of experts in this Cafe, but things have gone very quiet over
the last couple of years, so perhaps they have moved onto other places for
discussion.
I think the problem for information designers with studies like this is
that they run so directly against our own instincts and training. For the
most part, we spend our time trying to make text more easy to read and
thereby more useable by our clients. The whole notion of disfluency -- of
making something less fluent, less useable and more ugly –– is an anathema,
and sounds like something cooked up by academics rather than practitioners.
I'm afraid that I simply cannot accept that the production of any sort of
teaching material in Comic Sans, Hattenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva is a
good idea.
There have been sporadic discussions in this Cafe down the years about what
fonts are best for reading. They have all petered out because as someone
always indicates there are so many variables involved -- size, line length,
leading, spacing, colour etc etc -- that it is impossible to make a set of
rules.
Anyway, FWIW, those are my views. I don't have time to write a longer post
at the moment, but I wanted to let you know that at least one person had
read your original contribution and taken the trouble to look up the
reference.
By the way, you have posted the link to the Princeton article twice, and
omitted the link to the one in the Economist.
best wishes
Charles Foster
--------------------------------------
Charles Foster
Hi,
I’m a teacher and have a few weeks to read what I want for a change. I
came across this study (link to story about it, and the actual study,
below).
1. In the first study, the test group read items in Bodoni MT italic
60% gray scale or Comic Sans 12 point 60% gray scale. The control group read
Arial 16-point.
2. In the second study, high school teachers sent their learning
materials to the study, and œ were made the test groups read things in
Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva, or Comic Sans italicized in 12-point.
Alternatively, some materials were copied by moving the paper up and down
while copying when electronic docs were unavailable. The control group was
left in the fonts the teachers themselves chose; those fonts are unnamed.
This study demonstrated that student retention of material across a wide
range of subjects (science and
humanities classes) and difficulty levels (regular, Honors and Advanced
Placement) can be significantly improved
in naturalistic settings by presenting reading material in a format that is
slightly harder to read. While disfluency
appears to operate as a desirable difficulty, presumably engendering deeper
processing strategies (c.f. Alter et al.,
2007), the effect is driven by a surface feature that prima facie has
nothing to do with semantic processing.
The authors point out that the retention was only for 15 minutes, so there
may be less pronounced difference in longer terms.
Anyway, it seems odd to me on many, many levels—I wouldn’t consider reading
Arial 16 on a paper as a “fluent” choice. Someone found that a good font
has about 70 or fewer characters in a line (Schriver’s *Dynamics in
Document Design*, p. 263). They also don’t mention leading. They don’t
cite reasons that Arial 16 point was used, either.
I’d be interested in what Info-D folk think of this kind of study. I am
sometimes amazed at how blithely unaware some fields are about design.
Thanks,
Sue Smith
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
Actual Study
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
___________________________________________________________________
http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe
http://InformationDesign.org
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe
http://InformationDesign.org
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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

If I were to design hospital
forms that are difficult to
fill up, maybe people will
pay more attention, but at
the end of the day they will
be exhausted.

But this is an entirely different genre, no?

Most hospital forms are usually intended for record-keeping or some
other administrative purpose.

That doesn't mean we can't learn from them, but I don't think we often
do ... nor would this be their primary purpose.

So, I wouldn't think the study's authors -- who, for the most part,
are careful not to make extravagant claims about the
"generalizability" of their findings -- would recommend designing
hospital forms in Haettenschweiler.

(And speaking of hospital forms, there was an amusing segment a few
weeks ago on U.S. Public Radio's _Marketplace_ about the unintended
consequences of "disfluent" medical communications:

originally aired on _Marketplace_, Thursday, May 12, 2011
"What's in a drug name?"

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/05/12/pm-whats-in-a-drug-name/

I particularly liked the comment by respondent Tom Goodenow (below the
transcript, towards the bottom of the page):

"(In order to minimize errors by the filling pharmacist and
avoid confusion by patients, physicians are taught in medical
school to indicate on the instructions line of the
prescription the condition for which a drug is being
prescribed; but few doctors take the time or make the effort
to do this.)"

And I doubt that switching over to Comic Sans is going to motivate
prescription-writing doctors any better, or enable "deeper processing"
by pharmacists.... ;-)

However, one of the basic
premises is that people not
involved in a test, but
freely able to choose to
read or not to read, give
up reading quite easily if
the text does not appear
easy to read.

I agree. And this brings us to what I consider to be the all-important
question of student/reader motivation.

Only Study 2 looked at motivation:

"After the units were completed and exams were taken,
a four-question survey was administered to test whether
disfluency affected motivational factors. Students were
asked to rate their responses to the following questions
on a scale of 1–5: 'How difficult do you find the material
in this class?' (1 = 'very easy', 5 = 'very difficult'), 'How
do you feel about the material covered in class?' (1 = 'I like
it very little', 5 = 'I like it very much'), 'How frequently
do you feel confused or lost during class?' (1 = 'never', 5 =
'all the time'), and 'How likely are you to take classes on
this material in college?' (1 = 'very unlikely', 5 = 'very
likely')."

with the interesting result that

"Therefore, the survey did not reveal any liking or
motivational differences based on fluency."

I'm willing to accept the authors' finding on this, even though I'm
not convinced that this particular set of questions actually measures
student motivation.

But even if we assume that it does, I still question how
"generalizable" the authors' finding about "font manipulations"
actually is

"That said, fluency interventions are extremely cost-
effective, and font manipulations could be easily integrated
into new printed and electronic educational materials at
no additional cost to teachers, school systems, or
distributors. Moreover, fluency interventions do not require
curriculum reform or interfere with teachers’ classroom
management or teaching styles."

and

"Fluency demonstrates how [small interventions] have the
potential to make big improvements in the performance of our
students and education system as a whole."

given that the student population for Study 2 was unusually motivated
to begin with:

"Two hundred and twenty-two high school students (ages 15–18)
from a public school in Chesterland, Ohio participated in the
study. This school accommodates approximately 930 students
from grades 9–12 and reported a 98.6% graduation rate (90%
continue onto further education) and 95% attendance rate in
2008. Ninety-eight percent of students self-identify as
White."

(I don't claim to know about the rest of the U.S., but such graduation
rates would be quite extraordinary for the state of California.)

Adult readers I know (both young and old) who have trouble reading --
i.e., who are "disfluent" to begin with -- do not need further
impediments, when they're trying to learn-by-reading, in order to
stimulate "deeper processing".

The study authors also warn about this:

"Moreover, less motivated or able students from less
successful schools might be more inclined to give up on the
material rather than persist and encode it more deeply (c.f.
McNamara, Kintsch, Butler-Songer, & Kintsch, 1996). Thus,
further research is advisable before widespread
implementation of disfluency interventions."

Indeed, my own experience reading thousands of pages of 16th-century
English text -- printed with minimal leading in densely-set
Blackletter which has degraded over the centuries into its own style
of grunge type, complete with print show-through and staining --
convinces me that even the most motivated reader can be all too easily
distracted from real learning -- deep or otherwise -- by a difficult
presentation.

Admittedly, I don't think the authors are recommending 100% immersion
like this. Among their conclusions:

"It is important to ascertain the point at which material is
no longer disfluent, but instead illegible, or otherwise
unnecessarily difficult to the point that it hinders
learning. It seems possible that the influence of disfluency
on retention follows a U-shaped curve, and the exact
parameters of this function remain to be determined. With
this in mind, the most effective disfluency manipulations
would likely be those that are within the bounds of the
normal variation of fonts and materials that could reasonably
appear in a classroom."

Not sure that I know what this means, though (nor how we test for it),
especially since both studies described here focused on relatively
*short* texts (PowerPoint presentations and teacher handouts).


Rather than introducing more "superficial changes to learning
materials" in order to encourage "deeper processing", I personally
favor using rhetorically-appropriate and substantive, content-based
cognitive triggers.

The best teaching, it seems to me, challenges us to learn by exposing
us to strange & unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking/seeing that
stimulate our human curiosity.

Relying on typographic nudges that may or may not promote the
life-long habits of collaborative inquiry & learning we're all going
to need in order to thrive in the 21st century is not, IMO, an
adequate substitute ... no matter how cost-effective it may be.

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com
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[Rob Waller]

I don't think it's quite as simple as that... Well, nothing ever is on this list. It could be argued that some hospital forms do involve learning of the same kind you might find in a classroom.

Most of us indeed treat documents like forms as just administrative, but they can come back to bite us... When we sign a consent form in hospital, or a car rental contract, we are deemed to have understood it and cannot later protest. In some cases this means didactic explanations of what questions mean, or what the implications of different answers might be. For example, non-UK citizens working here have to tell the tax authorities whether they are 'resident', 'non-resident' or 'domiciled' here. You cannot answer the question without learning what they mean. Each is a distinction in law that has to be explained on the form or in notes.

I'm beginning to wonder if we haven't misjudged the small print. Based on this study, perhaps printing vital contract information in grey five point type is to help us understand it better.

And by the way, I'm starting to feel sorry for Comic Sans. Can we stop bullying it? If it looked like it does and was called Posh Sans or Cool Sans then there might be a case for mocking, but isn't the clue in the name? Perfectly reasonable to have a font like that to choose from.

Mind you, being offered Comic Sans as one of the choices for my father's funeral did make me wonder whether font licenses shouldn't require a test, like driving licenses do....

Rob Waller

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce

If I were to design hospital
forms that are difficult to
fill up, maybe people will
pay more attention, but at
the end of the day they will
be exhausted.

But this is an entirely different genre, no?
Most hospital forms are usually intended for record-keeping or some
other administrative purpose.
That doesn't mean we can't learn from them, but I don't think we often
do ... nor would this be their primary purpose.
So, I wouldn't think the study's authors -- who, for the most part,
are careful not to make extravagant claims about the
"generalizability" of their findings -- would recommend designing
hospital forms in Haettenschweiler.
(And speaking of hospital forms, there was an amusing segment a few
weeks ago on U.S. Public Radio's _Marketplace_ about the unintended
originally aired on _Marketplace_, Thursday, May 12, 2011
"What's in a drug name?"
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/05/12/pm-whats-in-a-drug-name/
I particularly liked the comment by respondent Tom Goodenow (below the
"(In order to minimize errors by the filling pharmacist and
avoid confusion by patients, physicians are taught in medical
school to indicate on the instructions line of the
prescription the condition for which a drug is being
prescribed; but few doctors take the time or make the effort
to do this.)"
And I doubt that switching over to Comic Sans is going to motivate
prescription-writing doctors any better, or enable "deeper processing"
by pharmacists.... ;-)

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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Post by Rob Waller
I'm beginning to wonder if
we haven't misjudged the
small print. Based on this
study, perhaps printing vital
contract information in grey
five point type is to help us
understand it better.

*If* we're motivated to read it.

And when it comes to many Terms of Service agreements for
seeming-freebies -- Google Mail and Yelp and Facebook, Flash and
JavaScript and Windows OS updates, and the like -- I expect most of us
lack motivation.

At some point while reading through the fine print -- say, after
you've been reading for 15 minutes and the slider is only 1/3 of the
way down the vertical scroll bar -- most of us are willing to trade
off rights and privacy in order to just get on with whatever it was we
were intending to do.

I usually make a valiant attempt to read all the small print the
*first* time around, but typically reach a tipping point, after which
I start scanning the text, before I cease viewing altogether ... which
is when a little designed-in "disfluency" -- especially for key
contractual notices such as:

"We claim exclusive copyright over everything and anything
you post to this site, with the added proviso that only we
may profit from user-generated content."

-- would probably grab my attention and get me reading again. ;-)

Even so, this kind of reading-to-learn usually ends up a frustrating
(rather than rewarding) experience, due to the limited choices and
outcomes which circumscribe learning -- much like voting in California
these days.

For the past few decades, Californians have been pretty much
legislating through the ballot box -- voting on a growing array of
disconnected "propositions" amending the state constitution and
mandating budget expenditures, etc.

I am one of those dutiful voters who believes that political rights
carry certain obligations of citizenship, and so I read every word of
the proposed legislation for each proposition, only to realize (every
single time! ;-) that it makes no difference whatsoever.

Yes, I have learned the material ... but I still don't truly
understand it.

What I do know is that there's plenty of political wheeling and
dealing going on around every proposition. But because I don't know
how this works, am not a lawyer or lobbyist, and don't want to devote
my life to the study of California state politics, I'm never going to
have sufficient expertise to figure out where the loopholes are ... or
how the various powers-that-be will manipulate even the best-intended
laws to their advantage ... or whether my yes/no vote will actually
achieve what I intend it to achieve, or, more likely, the opposite ...
no matter how much "deep processing" I do.

Yet, I must admit that there's a certain appeal to the idea of the
voter's pamphlet taking on a ransom-note look with the type!

I expect designers could have a lot of fun with this ... strategically
setting certain legal boilerplate in Comic Sans (which, for the
record, I don't think is anywhere near as bad as Haettenschweiler ;-)
... and dry legal summaries in something sassy like Lourdes or Dyna or
La Bamba ... and budget numbers in something dreamy like Blue Island
... and proposition titles in a sweeping pseudo-Baroque like Voluta
Script, or the mysterious initial caps of Copal, or maybe even
multi-sensory, textured Braille letters that run hot/cold to the
touch, or emit odors as you run your finger over them.... ;-)

Just think of all the extra messages you could encode in legislation
and other contractual language by using disfluent type strategically
(not to mention the potential employment for starving type designers
who could contract with the state and law offices around the world,
earning a living wage for developing new legislative types every year ;-).

One thing's for sure: I would have a lot more fun reading my voter's
pamphlet, and preparing to do my civic duty, than I do now!

And I expect there'd be a lot more dialogue among voters about the
issues, too (neighbor X to neighbor Y over the back fence: "Can you
tell what the hell Prop 37 is about?" ;-).

And I suppose this might hold for ballots, as well, with voters much
better able to remember what they're voting for, and why.

Who knows? If you did it right, you could perhaps generate as much
anticipation and enthusiasm for biennial voter pamphlet designs as the
Superbowl commercials draw in the U.S. ... or at least as much as when
new designs of government coins and stamps appear ... maybe even
turning the ephemera of democracy into collectibles and spawning an
equivalent to the philatelist for voter pamphlets.... ;-)

But unless somebody can raise money for an academic study of this, I
don't see it happening outside of a laboratory environment or virtual
world (anyone want to try this out in Second Life?).

There's too much at stake for the plutocracy.

In California, we have protracted political fights over every word in
the title of a proposition, let alone its legal content, resulting in
the sort of neutered language and inoffensive design that can be
stamped with a government imprimatur and passed out to voters.

The point of all this, as I understand it, is not just to inform, but
to control and curtail "deep processing" on the part of voters --
i.e., to rationalize a decidedly partisan, messy and emotional process
(democracy).

Post by Rob Waller
It could be argued that
some hospital forms do involve
learning of the same kind you
might find in a classroom.

You're right.

And because of the great respect I have for some of the talented folks
on this list who design forms, I've been telling some equally talented
physicians I know for a while now that it's possible to design forms
for, say, a surgical procedure, that would move beyond the usual CYA
documents geared at protecting institutions and managing administrivia
(Conrad's inspired coinage ;-).

One of my dreams is to develop surgical permissions forms for cancer
patients that become an enriching learning experience for all who use
them.

I'm thinking here of "use" in its broadest and most inclusive sense,
encompassing not only the initial design process -- which, as we all
know, is every bit as educational as it is creative and satisfying, at
least when done right! -- but also subsequent processing & review (of
completed forms).

It seems to me that medical forms can, and should, serve as discussion
aids -- used collaboratively to educate patients and health care
providers alike, about complicated medical options and trade-offs.

I certainly see how type could play an integral role in this,
especially as medical communications transform from institutional
monologue into a dialogue better suited to the changing nature of
expert-lay relations and customized health-care delivery systems in a
digital age -- ergo, requiring a whole new look-and-feel, able to
artfully combine the professional and the personal, the general and
the particular.

But type alone will not foment the educational revolution we seek
(which is my real objection to the Princeton study Susan pointed us to).

Post by Rob Waller
Mind you, being offered
Comic Sans as one of the
choices for my father's
funeral did make me wonder
whether font licenses
shouldn't require a test,
like driving licenses do....

<VBG>

What a smart idea!

Any risk-taking entrepreneurial type designers out there willing to
give it a try?

(Here's a thought: You could even turn the whole font license into an
artistic type specimen for the foundry ... poster size! ;-)

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com

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[Rob Waller]

Erm... Irony alert!

I routinely ask conference audiences who reads contracts before they sign or click on Agree. I'd say around 1 or 2 per cent put their hand up. But a recent survey found around 20 per cent of people have been disadvantaged by a stealth clause they were not aware of.

Rob Waller

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce

Post by Rob Waller
I'm beginning to wonder if
we haven't misjudged the
small print. Based on this
study, perhaps printing vital
contract information in grey
five point type is to help us
understand it better.

*If* we're motivated to read it.

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[Abi Searle-Jones]

A small, but not unrelated diversion: I'm sure many people will have seen
this story from last year...
UK games company Games Station added a clause to their terms and conditions
stating 'By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the
fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non
transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal
soul.'

More at
http://www.techeye.net/internet/gamestation-reveals-that-it-owns-customers-souls

They claimed that 88% of their customer did not read the clause. 12% noticed
and clicked an opt-out clause which gave them a £5 gift voucher. However, I
suspect that once one gamer read it, they will have tweeted all their
friends to get the voucher, so 12% is probably an optimistic figure.

Abi Searle-Jones

Post by Rob Waller
Erm... Irony alert!
I routinely ask conference audiences who reads contracts before they sign
or click on Agree. I'd say around 1 or 2 per cent put their hand up. But a
recent survey found around 20 per cent of people have been disadvantaged by
a stealth clause they were not aware of.
Rob Waller

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce

Post by Rob Waller
I'm beginning to wonder if
we haven't misjudged the
small print. Based on this
study, perhaps printing vital
contract information in grey
five point type is to help us
understand it better.

*If* we're motivated to read it.

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Post by Rob Waller
I routinely ask conference audiences who reads contracts before they sign or click on Agree. I'd say around 1 or 2 per cent put their hand up. But a recent survey found around 20 per cent of people have been disadvantaged by a stealth clause they were not aware of.

The plot of South Park a few weeks back centered around the kid who clicked on iTunes without reading the contract, thus agreeing to be part of something akin to "Human Centipeded 2."


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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Rob,

Post by Rob Waller
Erm... Irony alert!

FWIW, I did get -- and thoroughly enjoy! -- the irony (here and
elsewhere).

One of the problems with these kinds of discussions is that
long-winded people like me want to reply to everything everybody's
said, and it's just not possible (thankfully for the rest of you ;-).

In this case, after thinking about other responses and themes raised
during the course of discussion, I fixed on your ironic paragraph as
the quickest way in to what I wanted to say about motivation, and
frustrated learning, and "disfluency" transferred beyond the classroom
to more "naturalistic" settings (where we all become the test subjects
of our own study).

I admit: my metonymic substitutions are not ideal, but it's the best I
can do when in a hurry and responding on the fly.

That said, it's good that you question my assumptions (or at least
"problematize" them, as we literary critics like to say ;-).


On a related note -- here thinking of how Charles just brought us back
to the educational context with which Sue and the Princeton study are
most concerned -- I wanted to pass on the following link:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june11/schools_06-06.html

for a segment originally aired last night (6/6/2011) on the _PBS
NewsHour_, titled

"Grading Schools: How to Determine the 'Good' From the 'Bad'?"

SUMMARY:
"Students get graded by test scores, but how do we best
determine if a school is 'good' or 'bad'? Education
Correspondent John Merrow examines that question."

Merrow's feature is NOT about type-related disfluency.

But it is about the difficulties of teaching reading, assessing
outcomes, and measuring learning.

And it provides a real-life context for the Princeton study ... one
that should give us all pause.

Deborah
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[Rob Waller]

I mis-typed just now - the tax form wants to know if you are 'resident', 'ordinarily resident' or 'domiciled'. We had a cat once you might have asked that of.

Rob

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce

If I were to design hospital
forms that are difficult to
fill up, maybe people will
pay more attention, but at
the end of the day they will
be exhausted.

But this is an entirely different genre, no?
Most hospital forms are usually intended for record-keeping or some
other administrative purpose.
That doesn't mean we can't learn from them, but I don't think we often
do ... nor would this be their primary purpose.
So, I wouldn't think the study's authors -- who, for the most part,
are careful not to make extravagant claims about the
"generalizability" of their findings -- would recommend designing
hospital forms in Haettenschweiler.
(And speaking of hospital forms, there was an amusing segment a few
weeks ago on U.S. Public Radio's _Marketplace_ about the unintended
originally aired on _Marketplace_, Thursday, May 12, 2011
"What's in a drug name?"
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/05/12/pm-whats-in-a-drug-name/
I particularly liked the comment by respondent Tom Goodenow (below the
"(In order to minimize errors by the filling pharmacist and
avoid confusion by patients, physicians are taught in medical
school to indicate on the instructions line of the
prescription the condition for which a drug is being
prescribed; but few doctors take the time or make the effort
to do this.)"
And I doubt that switching over to Comic Sans is going to motivate
prescription-writing doctors any better, or enable "deeper processing"
by pharmacists.... ;-)

However, one of the basic
premises is that people not
involved in a test, but
freely able to choose to
read or not to read, give
up reading quite easily if
the text does not appear
easy to read.

I agree. And this brings us to what I consider to be the all-important
question of student/reader motivation.
"After the units were completed and exams were taken,
a four-question survey was administered to test whether
disfluency affected motivational factors. Students were
asked to rate their responses to the following questions
on a scale of 1–5: 'How difficult do you find the material
in this class?' (1 = 'very easy', 5 = 'very difficult'), 'How
do you feel about the material covered in class?' (1 = 'I like
it very little', 5 = 'I like it very much'), 'How frequently
do you feel confused or lost during class?' (1 = 'never', 5 =
'all the time'), and 'How likely are you to take classes on
this material in college?' (1 = 'very unlikely', 5 = 'very
likely')."
with the interesting result that
"Therefore, the survey did not reveal any liking or
motivational differences based on fluency."
I'm willing to accept the authors' finding on this, even though I'm
not convinced that this particular set of questions actually measures
student motivation.
But even if we assume that it does, I still question how
"generalizable" the authors' finding about "font manipulations"
actually is
"That said, fluency interventions are extremely cost-
effective, and font manipulations could be easily integrated
into new printed and electronic educational materials at
no additional cost to teachers, school systems, or
distributors. Moreover, fluency interventions do not require
curriculum reform or interfere with teachers’ classroom
management or teaching styles."
and
"Fluency demonstrates how [small interventions] have the
potential to make big improvements in the performance of our
students and education system as a whole."
given that the student population for Study 2 was unusually motivated
"Two hundred and twenty-two high school students (ages 15–18)
from a public school in Chesterland, Ohio participated in the
study. This school accommodates approximately 930 students
from grades 9–12 and reported a 98.6% graduation rate (90%
continue onto further education) and 95% attendance rate in
2008. Ninety-eight percent of students self-identify as
White."
(I don't claim to know about the rest of the U.S., but such graduation
rates would be quite extraordinary for the state of California.)
Adult readers I know (both young and old) who have trouble reading --
i.e., who are "disfluent" to begin with -- do not need further
impediments, when they're trying to learn-by-reading, in order to
stimulate "deeper processing".
"Moreover, less motivated or able students from less
successful schools might be more inclined to give up on the
material rather than persist and encode it more deeply (c.f.
McNamara, Kintsch, Butler-Songer, & Kintsch, 1996). Thus,
further research is advisable before widespread
implementation of disfluency interventions."
Indeed, my own experience reading thousands of pages of 16th-century
English text -- printed with minimal leading in densely-set
Blackletter which has degraded over the centuries into its own style
of grunge type, complete with print show-through and staining --
convinces me that even the most motivated reader can be all too easily
distracted from real learning -- deep or otherwise -- by a difficult
presentation.
Admittedly, I don't think the authors are recommending 100% immersion
"It is important to ascertain the point at which material is
no longer disfluent, but instead illegible, or otherwise
unnecessarily difficult to the point that it hinders
learning. It seems possible that the influence of disfluency
on retention follows a U-shaped curve, and the exact
parameters of this function remain to be determined. With
this in mind, the most effective disfluency manipulations
would likely be those that are within the bounds of the
normal variation of fonts and materials that could reasonably
appear in a classroom."
Not sure that I know what this means, though (nor how we test for it),
especially since both studies described here focused on relatively
*short* texts (PowerPoint presentations and teacher handouts).
Rather than introducing more "superficial changes to learning
materials" in order to encourage "deeper processing", I personally
favor using rhetorically-appropriate and substantive, content-based
cognitive triggers.
The best teaching, it seems to me, challenges us to learn by exposing
us to strange & unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking/seeing that
stimulate our human curiosity.
Relying on typographic nudges that may or may not promote the
life-long habits of collaborative inquiry & learning we're all going
to need in order to thrive in the 21st century is not, IMO, an
adequate substitute ... no matter how cost-effective it may be.
Deborah
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[Jose Marconi Bezerra de Souza]

Deborah, excellent!!


Rather than introducing more "superficial changes to learning

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
materials" in order to encourage "deeper processing", I personally
favor using rhetorically-appropriate and substantive, content-based
cognitive triggers.

I would say that it depends on the learning objectives. If you are trying
to
remember facts (some might say that this is NOT learning) you may have to
use
different strategies including the so called "desirable difficulties".

For example, the "Coloring Book" collection on anatomy and
geography<http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_browse-b_mrr_0?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AWynn+Kapit%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A400530011&bbn=266239&sort=relevancerank&ie=UTF8&qid=1307350867&rnid=400529011#/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AWynn+Kapit%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A400530011&bbn=266239&sort=relevancerank&ie=UTF8&qid=1307350899>.

The idea is to "force" you to make color links between
names (buble-like outlined shapes of hand written texts) and the spacial
representation of it.
Indeed, a quite laborious task that judging by its popularity seems to work
for some students (I have never read any research about it).
However, I am quite sure that some students given up this hard work strategy
without learning anything
(I can find some indication in second hand book shops).

I like the idea of information designers creating ingenious (some might say
wacky)
strategies for helping people to learn things. The whole subject of
"air craft recognition" seems to be filled up with these type of ideas.

José.

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
Deborah
_____
Deborah Taylor-Pearce
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[Ricardo Martins]

Reading is really a fascinating and complex area.

Many argue that something "legible" is something that can be read
quickly, smoothly, and it drives a lot of research toward simple
writing, using few strokes on letters, and so on. However, Carver (1992)
stated that the "speed of thought", which is a cognitive factor, is more
important for reading than just the shape of letters and their
distinctiveness. Patricia Wright (1978), on the concept of legibility,
thinks the same as saying that information processes related to sensory
information on the printed page, are dominated by higher levels of
analysis (conceptual and interpretative). Reading speed doesnŽt mean,
not always, better understanding (in fact, can mean the opposite).

Finally,it is stillearly tomakedirect statementsabout
causeandeffectbetweentheshapes of the lettersandefficient comprehension.

CARVER, R. *Reading rate: theory, research, and practical implications*.
/Journal of Reading/, v.36, n.2. 1992

WRIGHT, P. *Feeding the information eaters: suggestions for integrating
pure and applied research on language comprehension*. /Instructional
Science/, v.7., 1978

M.Sc. Ricardo Martins
Federal University of Paraná
Curitiba, PR - Brazil

Post by Charles Foster
Dear Sue
I'm disappointed that no one else has commented on your post! There
used to be a number of experts in this Cafe, but things have gone very
quiet over the last couple of years, so perhaps they have moved onto
other places for discussion.
I think the problem for information designers with studies like this
is that they run so directly against our own instincts and training.
For the most part, we spend our time trying to make text more easy to
read and thereby more useable by our clients. The whole notion of
disfluency -- of making something less fluent, less useable and more
ugly –– is an anathema, and sounds like something cooked up by
academics rather than practitioners. I'm afraid that I simply cannot
accept that the production of any sort of teaching material in Comic
Sans, Hattenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva is a good idea.
There have been sporadic discussions in this Cafe down the years about
what fonts are best for reading. They have all petered out because as
someone always indicates there are so many variables involved -- size,
line length, leading, spacing, colour etc etc -- that it is impossible
to make a set of rules.
Anyway, FWIW, those are my views. I don't have time to write a longer
post at the moment, but I wanted to let you know that at least one
person had read your original contribution and taken the trouble to
look up the reference.
By the way, you have posted the link to the Princeton article twice,
and omitted the link to the one in the Economist.
best wishes
Charles Foster
--------------------------------------
Charles Foster

Post by Charles Foster
Hi,
I’m a teacher and have a few weeks to read what I want for a change.
I came across this study (link to story about it, and the actual
study, below).
1.In the first study, the test group read items in Bodoni MT italic
60% gray scale or Comic Sans 12 point 60% gray scale. The control
group read Arial 16-point.
2.In the second study, high school teachers sent their learning
materials to the study, and œ were made the test groups read things
in Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva, or Comic Sans italicized in
12-point. Alternatively, some materials were copied by moving the
paper up and down while copying when electronic docs were
unavailable. The control group was left in the fonts the teachers
themselves chose; those fonts are unnamed.
This study demonstrated that student retention of material across a
wide range of subjects (science and
humanities classes) and difficulty levels (regular, Honors and
Advanced Placement) can be significantly improved
in naturalistic settings by presenting reading material in a format
that is slightly harder to read. While disfluency
appears to operate as a desirable difficulty, presumably engendering
deeper processing strategies (c.f. Alter et al.,
2007), the effect is driven by a surface feature that prima facie has
nothing to do with semantic processing.
The authors point out that the retention was only for 15 minutes, so
there may be less pronounced difference in longer terms.
Anyway, it seems odd to me on many, many levels—I wouldn’t consider
reading Arial 16 on a paper as a “fluent” choice. Someone found that
a good font has about 70 or fewer characters in a line (Schriver’s
/Dynamics in Document Design/, p. 263). They also don’t mention
leading. They don’t cite reasons that Arial 16 point was used, either.
I’d be interested in what Info-D folk think of this kind of study. I
am sometimes amazed at how blithely unaware some fields are about design.
Thanks,
Sue Smith
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
Actual Study
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf
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[Caroline Jarrett]

Post by Charles Foster
I'm disappointed that no one else has commented on your post!

<snip - discussion of the article>

We've had a couple of comments not, but I thought I'd explain why I didn't
comment previously (and it was primarily because I didn't have the right
expertise, I'm afraid).

I wanted to comment because I'm pretty outraged by the idea that
deliberately formatting things to be harder to read might encourage
learning. I even started to write a post that ranted about the paper
somewhat. Then I thought I'd better read it :-)

The authors do address some of my immediate concerns. The first part of
their experiment was silly, equating 'learning' with 'ability to retain
random made-up "facts" for 15 minutes'.

The second part was a lot more interesting. So far as I can make out, they
gathered real teaching materials from actual teachers in a high school
setting. Then they reformatted some of them, and assigned the materials
back. Then they found that the classes with the harder-to-read materials
achieved better results (slightly).

Now, I'm still highly sceptical about all this. The reasons I held off from
commenting here were:

1. I'm not sure I'm really understanding the statistics. Anyone here feel
confident about reading the stats argument? I *think* I'm seeing that
although the results are 'statistically significant', the effect size is
small and not necessarily all in the same direction. And I *think* I'm not
seeing anything about dispersion. For example: suppose that the 'easier'
condition results in a slightly lower performance overall but with fewer
extreme results (very bad or very good) and the 'harder' condition results
in a slightly higher performance overall but with more extreme results, then
I'd say: it's better to avoid some really bad performances, at the expense
of a slightly lower overall performance.

2. I'm not sure I'm really following the argument about randomisation. I
think you'd have to be a particularly visually insensitive teacher to fail
to notice that you're using teaching materials that have been manipulated to
be hard to read. So, I'd suspect that those teachers might very well teach
in a slightly different way, to help their students to overcome those
difficulties. So we might be looking at a classic Hawthorne effect rather
than a legibility effect.

3. I just didn't have time to puzzle through the paper at the level of
detail to deal with points 1 and 2 above.

What I do know, is that this rather thoughtful and somewhat limited
experiment has, as usual, become a blanket assertion in the media that
badly-formatted things are easier to learn from. Which is manifest nonsense.

Best
Caroline Jarrett
Twitter @cjforms
http://www.designtoread.com

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[Gunnar Swanson]

I think the problem for information designers with studies like this is that they run so directly against our own instincts and training. For the most part, we spend our time trying to make text more easy to read and thereby more useable by our clients. The whole notion of disfluency -- of making something less fluent, less useable and more ugly –– is an anathema, and sounds like something cooked up by academics rather than practitioners. I'm afraid that I simply cannot accept that the production of any sort of teaching material in Comic Sans, Hattenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva is a good idea.

One could dismiss it all as "cooked up by academics" but there -was- quite a bit of discussion about twenty years ago about making reading more difficult to change reading attitudes. I have some real problems with the dismissiveness of both the phrases "cooked up" and "by academics" but I'm willing to state that some of Kathy McCoy's claims in -Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse- seemed to be somewhere in the silly-to-horseshit range. The notion that making someone aware of the designer by forcing struggle in reading might make them aware of the fallibility of the author is intriguing but requires a leap more fit for Soren Kierkegaard or Jesse Owens than for folks like me who are more limited in our abductive abilities.

I wonder how much "our instincts" are actually instinctive. There also may have been quite a bit of training for making things "more ugly" during the New Discourse era although the only reference that comes to mind--the back-and-forth about Steve Heller's "The Cult of the Ugly"--didn't bring us to any neat conclusions.

I have deliberately designed work to appear difficult to read (note "appear") in order to slow people down when I feared their assumptions would overpower information on the poster. One can also argue that everything we do to call out particulars (whether in the form of subheads, pull quotes) to make them significant and memorable has the effect of slowing reading thus is, by some definition, more difficult.

There have been sporadic discussions in this Cafe down the years about what fonts are best for reading. They have all petered out because as someone always indicates there are so many variables involved -- size, line length, leading, spacing, colour etc etc -- that it is impossible to make a set of rules.

Yup. When academic try to cook up information, they are limited by reality. The reality is that it is very hard to change one variable then make simple universal conclusions based on the effects, especially ones that are useful to practitioners.

If "cooked up by academics" is shorthand for dismissing studies by people without a broad appreciation of the complexities of typography, then I join in the dismissal. It should be noted , however, that practitioners tend to, well, practice. Academics are the only ones we can expect to do the difficult and non-profitable work of seeking generalizable knowledge.

Post by Charles Foster
I'm disappointed that no one else has commented on your post!

<snip>

I even started to write a post that ranted about the paper
somewhat. Then I thought I'd better read it :-)

I haven't had time to read it. I am suspicious of such studies but much more suspicious of the way conclusions are reported. Thanks for taking the time and giving us a better view of it.

People tend to talk about "reading" and "learning" as singular things in reporting about studies of effects on reading and/or learning. You have to define both for purposes of such a study. Unfortunately, people want to apply any findings to every sort of reading and every sort of learning.

1. I'm not sure I'm really understanding the statistics.

<snip interesting comments about statistical significance and distribution including the following>

I'd say: it's better to avoid some really bad performances, at the expense
of a slightly lower overall performance.
What I do know, is that this rather thoughtful and somewhat limited
experiment has, as usual, become a blanket assertion in the media that
badly-formatted things are easier to learn from. Which is manifest nonsense.

Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA

***@gunnarswanson.com
[phone]

http://www.gunnarswanson.com




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[Rob Waller]

To pick up on Gunnar's remark that 'Academics are the only ones we can expect to do the difficult and non-profitable work of seeking generalizable knowledge'.

It seems to me that the experience of our own field is that much of the most insightful and generalisable knowledge comes from reflective practitioners (Donald Schon's term) who may or may not have have academic connections: scanning my bookshelf I can see Ken Garland, Robin Kinross, Gerard Unger, Karen Schriver, David Sless, Per Mollerup, most O'Reilly authors, etc, etc.

Incidentally, my iPad keeps trying to correct 'generalisable' to 'general usable'. I think it's got a point. If we're not content with being a craft, let's aim to be a technology not a science.

And don't forget that academic work is actually profitable for those who do it - publishing research papers is how we/they build careers.

Educational psychologists have been testing radical typographic ideas for many years, as Gunnar says. There was a brief fad for 'chunked' or 'square span' typography in the fifties (North & Jenkins 1951, Nahinsky 1956, Klare, Shuford & Nichols 1957) in which sense phrases were presented spaced or stacked.

A broader view of reading is that it is a strategic process in which a range of differently paced activities combine as readers (here, my iPad, ever insightful, suggests 'raiders') engage in scanning and searching as well as close reading. Whatever else it might be proven to do in the lab, messing with legibility is surely not going to help at this level.

Another random thought to add to the mix... In the early days of the Open University in the UK (1970s), which taught almost entirely through written texts, there was concern that students would just rattle through course texts without pausing to reflect. So frequent self-assessment exercise were used to engineer reflective moments, and opportunities for feedback (influenced by the programmed learning concept of positive reinforcement, too). But they also introduced a device known as a 'student stopper'. This was a bold, sometimes decorative bar across the page which students were told meant 'stop and think about what you've just read'.

Rob Waller

[Jose Marconi Bezerra de Souza]

Colleagues,


I wonder if one day one of us will write something like "Infodesign-cafe top
10 discussions",
it could be so illuminating. It could also instigate people to continue
discussing.

I am not a specialist in the subject (typography for reading), but I have to
say that
any research that defies information designers’ established assumptions is
“good” research.



This research in particular remind me that our obsession with “clarity” and
“fluency” is not “the” route to design “effective” information design
artefacts.

The question “how to make people to remember and/or learn things for some
period of time?” is more complex than we may think.
“To err is human” and sometimes can lead to “meaningful” learning.

So, what are these "forgiveable" learning contexts?



Rather than being considered “acceptable” or “correct” by our peers, our
designs could work primarily as learning tools and,

therefore, the strategic placement of “desirable difficulties” (we should go
far beyond the typographic layout) can be in tune with learning theories and
goals.

So, what are the "best" desirable difficulties that we have designed so far?




José.

Post by Rob Waller
To pick up on Gunnar's remark that 'Academics are the only ones we can
expect to do the difficult and non-profitable work of seeking generalizable
knowledge'.
It seems to me that the experience of our own field is that much of the
most insightful and generalisable knowledge comes from reflective
practitioners (Donald Schon's term) who may or may not have have academic
connections: scanning my bookshelf I can see Ken Garland, Robin Kinross,
Gerard Unger, Karen Schriver, David Sless, Per Mollerup, most O'Reilly
authors, etc, etc.
Incidentally, my iPad keeps trying to correct 'generalisable' to 'general
usable'. I think it's got a point. If we're not content with being a craft,
let's aim to be a technology not a science.
And don't forget that academic work is actually profitable for those who do
it - publishing research papers is how we/they build careers.
Educational psychologists have been testing radical typographic ideas for
many years, as Gunnar says. There was a brief fad for 'chunked' or 'square
span' typography in the fifties (North & Jenkins 1951, Nahinsky 1956, Klare,
Shuford & Nichols 1957) in which sense phrases were presented spaced or
stacked.
A broader view of reading is that it is a strategic process in which a
range of differently paced activities combine as readers (here, my iPad,
ever insightful, suggests 'raiders') engage in scanning and searching as
well as close reading. Whatever else it might be proven to do in the lab,
messing with legibility is surely not going to help at this level.
Another random thought to add to the mix... In the early days of the Open
University in the UK (1970s), which taught almost entirely through written
texts, there was concern that students would just rattle through course
texts without pausing to reflect. So frequent self-assessment exercise were
used to engineer reflective moments, and opportunities for feedback
(influenced by the programmed learning concept of positive reinforcement,
too). But they also introduced a device known as a 'student stopper'. This
was a bold, sometimes decorative bar across the page which students were
told meant 'stop and think about what you've just read'.
Rob Waller
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___________________________________________________________________

[Yateendra Joshi]

Talking of research, I wonder whether Stanislas Dehaene's work has put paid
to endless discussions
about all-caps and lowercase settings.

"Crucially, it [the brain] reacts in the same way regardless of whether the
words appear in same case
. . . or in different case"
Dehaene S. 2009. Reading in the Brain: the new science of how we read, p.
90.
New York: Penguin Books. 388 pages.

Disclaimer: I am yet to finish the book -- is is pretty dense -- but
recommend it strongly.

Yateen

On 5 June 2011 16:29, Jose Marconi Bezerra de Souza <

Post by Jose Marconi Bezerra de Souza
Colleagues,
I wonder if one day one of us will write something like "Infodesign-cafe
top 10 discussions",
it could be so illuminating. It could also instigate people to continue
discussing.
I am not a specialist in the subject (typography for reading), but I have
to say that
any research that defies information designers’ established assumptions is
“good” research.
This research in particular remind me that our obsession with “clarity” and
“fluency” is not “the” route to design “effective” information design
artefacts.
The question “how to make people to remember and/or learn things for some
period of time?” is more complex than we may think.
“To err is human” and sometimes can lead to “meaningful” learning.
So, what are these "forgiveable" learning contexts?
Rather than being considered “acceptable” or “correct” by our peers, our
designs could work primarily as learning tools and,
therefore, the strategic placement of “desirable difficulties” (we should
go far beyond the typographic layout) can be in tune with learning theories
and goals.
So, what are the "best" desirable difficulties that we have designed so far?
José.

Post by Rob Waller
To pick up on Gunnar's remark that 'Academics are the only ones we can
expect to do the difficult and non-profitable work of seeking generalizable
knowledge'.
It seems to me that the experience of our own field is that much of the
most insightful and generalisable knowledge comes from reflective
practitioners (Donald Schon's term) who may or may not have have academic
connections: scanning my bookshelf I can see Ken Garland, Robin Kinross,
Gerard Unger, Karen Schriver, David Sless, Per Mollerup, most O'Reilly
authors, etc, etc.
Incidentally, my iPad keeps trying to correct 'generalisable' to 'general
usable'. I think it's got a point. If we're not content with being a craft,
let's aim to be a technology not a science.
And don't forget that academic work is actually profitable for those who
do it - publishing research papers is how we/they build careers.
Educational psychologists have been testing radical typographic ideas for
many years, as Gunnar says. There was a brief fad for 'chunked' or 'square
span' typography in the fifties (North & Jenkins 1951, Nahinsky 1956, Klare,
Shuford & Nichols 1957) in which sense phrases were presented spaced or
stacked.
A broader view of reading is that it is a strategic process in which a
range of differently paced activities combine as readers (here, my iPad,
ever insightful, suggests 'raiders') engage in scanning and searching as
well as close reading. Whatever else it might be proven to do in the lab,
messing with legibility is surely not going to help at this level.
Another random thought to add to the mix... In the early days of the Open
University in the UK (1970s), which taught almost entirely through written
texts, there was concern that students would just rattle through course
texts without pausing to reflect. So frequent self-assessment exercise were
used to engineer reflective moments, and opportunities for feedback
(influenced by the programmed learning concept of positive reinforcement,
too). But they also introduced a device known as a 'student stopper'. This
was a bold, sometimes decorative bar across the page which students were
told meant 'stop and think about what you've just read'.
Rob Waller
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--
*José Marconi Bezerra de Souza (PhD, 2008)*
Consultor em design da informação e professor do Mestrado e Graduação de
Design da UFPR
*Information design consultant and university lecturer (Brazil)
PhD **- Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, The University
of Reading (UK, 2008)*
*Master of Arts - **Department of Three-Dimensional Design, The Birmingham
City University (UK, 1992)*
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___________________________________________________________________

[Charles Foster]

Well, Sue, I hope that you have found this discussion interesting!

One more point I forgot to make in my first contribution.

The study used already existing handouts and PPT slides which were
presumably designed by teachers, not designers. My experience of
having two secondary school age children tells me that teachers are
not very good at designing their own material. Most of the worksheets
and handouts that I have seen are laid out in Word, straight out of
the tin in Times or Comic Sans, and the Powerpoint slides use the
usual range of cheesy templates.

Quite a lot of stuff has also been copied from books and recopied
many times.

There's plenty of disfluency about, without it being deliberately
added to.

Charles


--------------------------------------
Charles Foster
Tel: [phone]
email: ***@eircom.net
website: www.charlesfoster.info

[Sharp, Roger]

A comment I would make about disfluency is that while it increased
retention, it decreased confidence in putting the information to use.
While this may be an acceptable trade-off for students, in industries
where customers are reading the text, this may not be a trade-off at
all.



Roger Sharp

www.dataio.com

Redmond, WA

[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Roger,

Post by Sharp, Roger
A comment I would make
about disfluency is that
while it increased
retention, it decreased
confidence in putting the
information to use.

Can you give us a source for this?

I, for one, would be interested in learning more.

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com

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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

All,

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
Roger,

Post by Sharp, Roger
A comment I would make
about disfluency is that
while it increased
retention, it decreased
confidence in putting the
information to use.

Can you give us a source for this?
I, for one, would be interested in learning more.

And today Roger answered my question, telling me off-list that he had

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
the same article that Susan Smith alerted us to
(in her original post 'Learning more from harder-to-read fonts') at

http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/Diemand-Yauman_Oppenheimer_2010.pdf

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
'For example, Alter and his colleagues presented participants
with logical syllogisms in either an easy- or difficult-to-
read font. Participants were significantly less confident
in their ability to solve the problems when the font was
hard-to-read, however they were in reality significantly
more successful.'

I'm ashamed to say I missed Roger's astute observation about this
finding the first time I read it, probably because it dovetails neatly
with my own belief that false confidence undermines all good things in
this world. ;-)

In other words, I interpreted the passage to mean that students tend
to be overconfident about their mastery of material presented in
easy-to-read type, and that hard-to-read type can serve as a needed
corrective for this.

Now that I read the passage again, I note that this is NOT what the
authors say. (The conflation of confidence with overconfidence is mine
alone.)

Even more now, than when I first read through the Princeton study, I
wish the authors had said a lot more about the role of type in
boosting or decreasing confidence.

At the very least, I wish they'd given more information about how they
measured this loss of confidence, and whether or not the decrease was
statistically significant (or perhaps they did somewhere, and I missed
this, too?).


I have long thought that self-efficacy (which, following Albert Bandura

http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/efficacy.html

I generally prefer to "confidence") is a key factor in the kind of
motivation that drives learning.

We all have to be pretty motivated to stick with something that's
difficult to learn and/or do, and if we don't have personal experience
with the many rewards of "failure" (especially initially), it can be
hard, if not impossible, to persevere against our more immediate
(pleasure-seeking) self-interests.

So I want to return to Roger's original point about typeface-induced

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
While this may be an
acceptable trade-off for
students, in industries
where customers are reading
the text, this may not be
a trade-off at all.

If we define confidence as "self-efficacy" rather than overconfidence,
then I don't think its loss is any better for students in the
classroom than it is for professionals trying to learn from the help
manual how to change the background color of a bitmapped image in
Photoshop.

(I can personally attest to the complete despair I gave into when
unable to learn how to do the most basic of tasks in Photoshop. For
years, I went to ridiculous extremes in order to avoid changing bg
colors in Photoshop, until I finally learned from a friend -- who
taught himself how to do it using CorelDRAW's PhotoPaint, because he
couldn't figure it out in Photoshop either -- to use the SELECT (Color
Range command) and EDIT (Fill command) menus in Photoshop, and NOT the
Replace Color command, which sometimes mysteriously worked, but more
often didn't. This particular SELECT + EDIT menu combination was *so*
unintuitive to me that I spent years redesigning layouts and/or
recreating graphics in order to avoid changing a bg color. My
psychological block was absurd, I know ... but not, I'll bet, unique,
especially for those of us who are disfluent when it comes to
painting/drawing and photography.)

There is a school of thought out there that if you add play to
learning, you can improve outcomes considerably. Here, I'm thinking of
Jane McGonigal's recent book about gaming, _Reality Is Broken_, in
which she argues that the gamer mindset has the power to fix our
broken brick-and-mortar world.

E.g., from McGonigal's 20 Jan. 2011 interview on the U.S. public radio
program, _Marketplace_:

"What seems to me to be totally broken about reality is the
difference between how we feel when we're playing our
favorite games and how we feel in real life. When we're
playing our favorite games, we feel like we are on a journey.
We have a heroic purpose and we are ready to rise to the
occasion. And in our real lives, we just don't have the sense
that we can do something that matters, that we can have that
impact, that we have the collaborators. And I'm really just
looking for ways to take that incredible structure of games
-- that put us on the path to save the world -- and bring it
into the real world."

and

"... So the first thing, I think this is the most important
one when it comes to solving real-world problems, is they
have an incredible resilience in the face of difficult
challenges. So gamers spend 80 percent of their time failing
in game worlds. They are not completing the mission, they're
not leveling up, they didn't find the loot that they were
looking for. And this is really remarkable. In real life, if
we were spending 80 percent of our time failing at something,
we would quit and go home. We would think we were bad and
that would not be any fun. But gamers have this ability to
keep their eye on a really ambitious goal."

complete interview at:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/01/20/pm-playing-video-games-can-change-the-world/

with an excerpt on _Marketplace_'s Book Blog at:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/the-big-book/2011/01/excerpt-reality-is-broken.html

So maybe the Princeton study needs to go further and look at how the
use of fun disfluent fonts (vs. Haettenschweiler-style induced
disfluency) impacts confidence -- if at all -- as well as "deep
processing".


Roger raised the question whether loss of confidence "in their ability
to solve the problems" would be an acceptable trade-off in the
workplace, and other non-classroom settings.

I would say, once again, that it depends on how we define confidence
(self-efficacy? or overconfidence?).

The former we need; the latter, we don't.

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com

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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Cafe,

1. Yesterday's U.S. public radio program, _Marketplace_, had an
interesting interview with Bob Lutz about his new book, _Car Guys vs.
Bean Counters_, wherein Lutz argues that the downfall of the U.S. car
industry is attributable to "putting numbers before design".

the interview (originally aired 13 June 2011) is at:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/13/pm-the-us-car-industrys-downfall-putting-numbers-before-design/

& an excerpt from Lutz's book is available via _Marketplace_'s The Big
Book blog at:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/the-big-book/2011/06/car-guys-vs-bean-counters-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-american-business.html


2. Yesterday's _Marketplace_ also had an interesting story on "How
the art and science of selling food can be redirected to fight obesity":

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/13/pm-the-supermarket-solution/

For those of you outside the U.S. who might think such re-designs of
supermarket shelves and floor space make good sense, see the comment
at page bottom from a "Concerned Shopper" -- IMO, representative of
many folks in the U.S., on the political left & right, who actively
oppose behaviorist "nudges" coming from government etc., with the
do-gooder intent of saving us from ourselves.

This deep-seated suspicion of attempts to outlaw and/or suppress human
nature reverberates throughout the debate on healthcare reform in this
country (e.g., who should pay for treating the risk-taking smoker with
emphysema late in life?).


Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com


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[Gunnar Swanson]

Deborah,

I'm pretty sure that "concerned shopper" was being sarcastic but I suspect that many others might agree un-ironically. It's not unreasonable to find government intrusion into our lives more troublesome than non-govermental intrusion. (CBS News videotaping a political rally is one thing, the Feds doing it is another. A fashion magazine telling me that I'd be happier if I wore briefs instead of boxers is stupid, a state agency doing so would be weirdly Orwellian.)

When I go into a store, I'm quite aware that they are trying to sell me stuff. That's the reason they built the store. At least their agenda is clear. Government overtly regulating for the collective good (e.g., setting light bulb efficiency or toy safety standards) is one thing but I can understand someone being at very least a bit creeped out by government covertly manipulating individual decisions. And then you get into the fight about what we should be manipulated to do. I, for instance, am convinced that the low fat salad dressings that Karen Glanz is advocating stores push are really bad for you.


Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA

***@gunnarswanson.com
[phone]

http://www.gunnarswanson.com

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/13/pm-the-supermarket-solution/
For those of you outside the U.S. who might think such re-designs of
supermarket shelves and floor space make good sense, see the comment
at page bottom from a "Concerned Shopper" -- IMO, representative of
many folks in the U.S., on the political left & right, who actively
oppose behaviorist "nudges" coming from government etc., with the
do-gooder intent of saving us from ourselves.
This deep-seated suspicion of attempts to outlaw and/or suppress human
nature reverberates throughout the debate on healthcare reform in this
country (e.g., who should pay for treating the risk-taking smoker with
emphysema late in life?).

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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Gunnar,

Post by Gunnar Swanson
Government overtly regulating
for the collective good (e.g.,
setting light bulb efficiency
or toy safety standards) is
one thing but I can understand
someone being at very least a
bit creeped out by government
covertly manipulating individual
decisions.

I think this is a really important distinction ... at least for the
political left in this country (I'm not sure that the hard-core
libertarian right supports any regulatory role for government,
including things like food safety, which is chronically under-funded).

But even this notion of the "collective good" is slippery, and must be
continually re-negotiated.

Many who think abortion is murder would argue that it is in the
"collective good" to outlaw it ... OTOH, those who think abortion is a
profoundly private matter, argue that government should stay out of it.

But this (the debate over abortion in the U.S.) is an *overt*
political argument of long standing, which makes all the difference.

As a student of rhetoric, my own personal issue here is with
information asymmetries that distort the realm of responsible human
choice and conduct (the "covert manipulation" part ;-).

There's already too much of this, as far as I'm concerned.

(My partner was recently in a car accident, and I'm still dealing
first-hand with the information asymmetries built into this experience
which impede decision-making, from the moment of impact.)

I also know that such covert manipulation is a constant of modern life
-- common to friends and family, communities (large and small, online
and off-), politicians, businesses, professions, courts, schools,
governmental and non-governmental institutions alike.

Contrary to its often predicted demise, the art of persuasion grows
ever more sophisticated, and continues to thrive! ;-)

Post by Gunnar Swanson
And then you get into the fight
about what we should be
manipulated to do. I, for
instance, am convinced that the
low fat salad dressings that
Karen Glanz is advocating
stores push are really bad for
you.

I agree that there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers to be had
when it comes to matters of individual health and well-being (so
speaks the rhetorician, yet again ;-).

That said ... why not push apples, as well as candy bars and other
processed snack foods, at the checkout counter?

And for our own personal edification: what is your objection to
low-fat salad dressings?

... That low-fat items are often high-sodium? (I swear there's a
correlation here: as one element in the fat/sodium binary goes down,
the other goes up to compensate.)

... Or that a certain amount of fat is needed in order to most
efficiently absorb the nutrients in veggies?

... Or that the "low-fat" labeling encourages us to eat way more of
the processed dressing (oftentimes, with added sugar, etc.) than we
ought to?

... Or perhaps something else?

Just curious,
Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com






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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Cafe,

We've discussed anti-smoking information campaigns before, and now,
right on the heels of our latest discussion of health information
campaigns, come two more stories about another "nudge" campaign being
launched in the U.S.:

"New Cigarette Warning Labels Pack More Visual Punch"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on the _PBS NewsHour_)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/06/new-cigarette-warnings-unveiled.html

and

"What's an ugly photo worth?"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on _Marketplace_)
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/21/pm-whats-an-ugly-photo-worth/

Apparently,

"When the images appear next year, the U.S. will fall into
line with 41 other countries and World Health Organization
guidelines. Dr. Adriana Blanco of the WHO says images are
proven more likely than text to nudge people into quitting --
partly by grossing out your friends and family."

And: the new ugly packaging is supposed to turn off the youth market.

But enough to make them quit smoking?

Or does it all just become the new noise, that we learn to ignore?

(Perhaps the warning message should be set in a disfluent type like
Hattenschweiler? ;-)

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com
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[Rob Waller]

I imagine these days most smokers know cigarettes kill you... eventually. But when you're young 'eventually' is a long long way off, along with the need for a pension.

There was a brand called 'Death Cigarettes' marketed in the UK in the 90s. I remember hearing about it but not actually seeing it. According to a Wikipedia entry on it, their slogan was 'The Grim Reaper Don't Come Cheaper'.

Rob Waller

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
Cafe,
We've discussed anti-smoking information campaigns before, and now,
right on the heels of our latest discussion of health information
campaigns, come two more stories about another "nudge" campaign being
"New Cigarette Warning Labels Pack More Visual Punch"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on the _PBS NewsHour_)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/06/new-cigarette-warnings-unveiled.html
and
"What's an ugly photo worth?"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on _Marketplace_)
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/21/pm-whats-an-ugly-photo-worth/
Apparently,
"When the images appear next year, the U.S. will fall into
line with 41 other countries and World Health Organization
guidelines. Dr. Adriana Blanco of the WHO says images are
proven more likely than text to nudge people into quitting --
partly by grossing out your friends and family."
And: the new ugly packaging is supposed to turn off the youth market.
But enough to make them quit smoking?
Or does it all just become the new noise, that we learn to ignore?
(Perhaps the warning message should be set in a disfluent type like
Hattenschweiler? ;-)
Deborah
_____
Deborah Taylor-Pearce
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http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe
http://InformationDesign.org
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[Tori Egherman]

Those packages are destined to appeal to teens. What I wouldn't have
given for a gross-out t-shirt featuring sick and rotting lungs when I
was in my teens. I might have even taken up smoking to get one.

When are they going to learn?

Tori

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Rob Waller

Post by Rob Waller
I imagine these days most smokers know cigarettes kill you... eventually. But when you're young 'eventually' is a long long way off, along with the need for a pension.
There was a brand called 'Death Cigarettes' marketed in the UK in the 90s. I remember hearing about it but not actually seeing it. According to a Wikipedia entry on it, their slogan was 'The Grim Reaper Don't Come Cheaper'.
Rob Waller

Post by Deborah Taylor-Pearce
Cafe,
We've discussed anti-smoking information campaigns before, and now,
right on the heels of our latest discussion of health information
campaigns, come two more stories about another "nudge" campaign being
"New Cigarette Warning Labels Pack More Visual Punch"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on the _PBS NewsHour_)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/06/new-cigarette-warnings-unveiled.html
and
"What's an ugly photo worth?"
(originally aired Tuesday, 21 June 2011 on _Marketplace_)
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/21/pm-whats-an-ugly-photo-worth/
Apparently,
      "When the images appear next year, the U.S. will fall into
      line with 41 other countries and World Health Organization
      guidelines. Dr. Adriana Blanco of the WHO says images are
      proven more likely than text to nudge people into quitting --
      partly by grossing out your friends and family."
And: the new ugly packaging is supposed to turn off the youth market.
But enough to make them quit smoking?
Or does it all just become the new noise, that we learn to ignore?
(Perhaps the warning message should be set in a disfluent type like
Hattenschweiler? ;-)
Deborah
_____
Deborah Taylor-Pearce
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http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe
http://InformationDesign.org
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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Post by Tori Egherman
When are they going to learn?

Yup. My sentiments exactly. <bg>

Only a couple of the images are perhaps gruesome enough to stand out
from the crowd for a sophisticated viewing audience raised on
violence-ridden movies and (CSI-style) televised series featuring
blood & guts & medical procedures almost as main characters.

The shock value just isn't there, especially for kids who live with
real, immediate violence every day (domestic violence and abuse, gang
shootings/stabbings/beatings, war, etc.).

I don't actually think there are any images capable of getting teens
to project themselves into a diseased middle or old age, which is when
cancer & heart disease usually strike.

And if they could, it's probably the ravages of aging more than
smoking which would terrify. ;-)

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com

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[David Sless]

Hi All,

In oz the government has gone two steps further. The disease pictures have been with us for a few years. The most recent initiative is that tobacco products cannot be displayed on open shelves and have to be shelved behind closed cupboard doors with 'warnings' on them. Yet to come later this year is 'plain packaging' with no colour or branding, just the product name in small print, with the disease pictures and warnings covering most of the pack surface.

I have long since given up arguing about the 'effectiveness' of these messages, though I don't disagree with the comments that Rob, Deborah and others have made.

However, I think there is another more useful way of looking at this trend and the significance of the actions governments have been taking.

In the first instance, we can see these moves as a progressive grab for control of real estate. Every additional square centimetre of space that is controlled by government rather than industry is a simple expression of increased power. What goes into that space is less important than control over the space itself.

Second, like much government communication of this type, it falls far more comfortably into the ritual of display rather than any notion of effective communication. This often happens in situations where governments would like to control something, find they cannot, but they can put on a good show to tell us that they care. It's like rain making ceremonies in societies that would like to control the weather, cannot, but can show that at least they tried by putting on a good rain making ceremony.

At a more general level, it seems to me that we information designers often fail to make the distinction between ritual and 'effective communication'. Both have their place and they sometimes overlap in both productive and unproductive ways. Indeed much of the schism between information design and graphic design hovers around a lack of clear distinction between these two legitimate aspects of design.

Warm regards from wintery Melbourne.

David
--

[Gunnar Swanson]

Post by David Sless
In oz the government has gone two steps further. The disease pictures have been with us for a few years. The most recent initiative is that tobacco products cannot be displayed on open shelves and have to be shelved behind closed cupboard doors with 'warnings' on them.

[snip]

Post by David Sless
we can see these moves as a progressive grab for control of real estate. Every additional square centimetre of space that is controlled by government rather than industry is a simple expression of increased power. What goes into that space is less important than control over the space itself.

[snip]

Post by David Sless
it falls far more comfortably into the ritual of display rather than any notion of effective communication. This often happens in situations where governments would like to control something, find they cannot, but they can put on a good show to tell us that they care.

In Oz, they lock up cigarettes in their ceremonial display of disapproval. In America's similarly ceremonial War on Drugs, we lock up tens of thousands of people. We also make them wear ugly generic clothing but haven't included cautionary photographs on them yet.

Warmest regards from hot and steamy North Carolina.


Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA

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[phone]

http://www.gunnarswanson.com




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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Post by David Sless
Second, like much government communication of this type, it falls far more comfortably into the ritual of display rather than any notion of effective communication.

I was going to respond by questioning whether or not the U.S.
government can afford any more ineffective communications rituals of
this sort (i.e., in this new era of fiscal austerity, when all sorts
of life-saving medical services are being cut across the country, we
no longer have money to throw away on more either/or public policy
campaigns, and need to learn instead how to craft both/and medical
communications that artfully combine affect + effect).

But then today's (Sunday, 26 June 2011) _Los Angeles Times_ ran a very
interesting feature:

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-smoking-barb-tarbox-20110626,0,7948435,full.story

which makes me think there may be some hope for this anti-smoking
campaign yet.

Melissa Healy's _LA Times_ article provides new information about the
research used for public-policy decision-making in the U.S., and
includes reproductions of another picture from the original 36

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-smoking-barb-tarbox-photos,0,7257673.photogallery
(images #2 and #3 in the slideshow)

which was rejected by the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration)
because "it went too far". (I suppose it could, however, make the cut
the next time around, since "a fresh crop may be chosen in as little
as a year".)

I think this is a pretty powerful & haunting image (because there's a
compelling narrative here, which the 9 chosen images lack, and because
it doesn't require much of an imaginative leap to see yourself or
someone you know in this photograph, regardless of how old you are).

I still don't think that an image (with accompanying textual warning:
"Cigarettes cause cancer.") is enough to

"persuade a person to change his or her behavior"

but must admit that if there is such an image, the Canadian version of
Barb Tarbox's deathbed picture (with more explicit message: "This is
what dying of lung cancer looks like.") would be it.

So, even though our federal officials thought the U.S. consuming
public couldn't handle such truth in advertising, they may get there
yet = succeed in changing the visual culture around smoking with this
campaign (and that's half the battle! ;-).

Deborah
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Deborah Taylor-Pearce
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[David Sless]

There are good reasons to be very skeptical about the sort of research that is used in support of this type of decision making.

But, there is certainly grounds for suggesting that such material 'enriches' our visual culture and provides some kinds of space within which the discourse can develop.

David

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[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

I just now noticed that I forgot to include the main _PBS NewsHour_
link (to a 6/21/2011 _NewsHour_ interview with FDA commissioner,
Margaret Hamburg) in my original post:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june11/cigarettewar_06-21.html

This is the more substantive _NewsHour_ analysis ("The Rundown" is
their complementary website blog), and it should be of interest to
Cafeistas because it describes the research behind the government's
choice of images (they chose 9 images from a starting group of 36,
based on their study of consumer responses to health warning labels).

Plus, the video (of the interview) shows the new design of the
cigarette packages, with the brand repositioning (to which the tobacco
companies are objecting).

It would appear that, once again, our designer (and rhetorical)
intuitions are at odds with the research findings.... ;-)

Deborah
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Deborah Taylor-Pearce
***@she-philosopher.com
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