[LINK] Environmental impact of web versus print

[Karl Auer]

On Wed, 2006-09-27 at 12:16 +1000, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> > Again, comfortable isn't necessarily the same thing as comprehensible or
> > retainable.
> >   
> Actually, "comfort" is highly correlated with retention when objective 
> measures are applied.

With serif vs sans-serif specifically? People can "prefer" things for a
host of reasons. Sans-serif looks "cooler", "more modern" or whatever.
I'm quite happy with the idea that research has shown people to be "more
comfortable" with this or that, or that they prefer such and such over
so and so, but so far noone has shown anything that says sans-serif is
better comprehended and better retained, by younger or older readers.

> The old research looked at how much the eyes moved when reading a set 
> amount of text, on the hypothesis that more eye movement was more 
> tiring, therefore would inhibit comprehension and retention.

Well, on the face of it the bit about "tiring" sounds like a bad
assumption.

> Less eye movement was correlated with better comprehension.

That's an empirical result, not an assumption - good. Was there any
correlation between stated comfort and amount of eye movement? What
about eye movement over time - less as people tired, or more? You imply
that the old research found more eye movement with sans-serif than with
serif (which is what I would expect given the lesser amount of
redundancy in sans-serif). You'd kind of expect to get more eye movement
as the reader tired (and less accurate eye movement).

Sorry to be picky, but we live in an age of bad research and piss-poor
interpretation of same. It's worth being precise.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)