
The science behind how fonts make you feel - aj
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/12/23/science-behind-fonts-make-feel/#!rL4k6
======
noelwelsh
One study referenced had 20 participants. Another had 25. These are really
small studies! Their small size means there is a high chance that the effect
doesn't actually hold.

It's fine to say "some small studies suggest this is true", and then use it
practice because doing a better study is beyond your means or simply not
important. It's fine to do small studies, because it's a cheaper way to look
for interesting effects that might then be investigated in more detail. But
let's not pretend "science" has decided this issue beyond reasonable doubt.

"Science", some amorphous entity quite disconnected from real science, has
become a religion of sorts for some non-scientifically minded people. Put
"science" is a post title and you'll fool many into thinking you speak from
authority. I feel the author is well intentioned here, but has gone far beyond
what the science suggests.

~~~
wch
Those samples might be on the smaller side, but they're not "really small".
And no, a small sample size doesn't mean that there's a high chance that
there's a false positive. What it does mean is that there's a higher chance
for a false negative - that is, the experiment fails to detect a real effect.
That's what the standard statistical tests will do.

~~~
nhaehnle
What you write is not quite wrong, but it must be taken with a spoon of salt
due to the way this kind of science is usually done.

If you fix a binary hypothesis, and then run your experiment for that specific
hypothesis _and only that hypothesis_ , then you're right.

In practice, though, people look at data such as from such experiments, and
then invent a hypothesis that fits. The space of potential plausible-sounding
hypotheses is huge (especially since, in many cases in psychology and related
fields, both A and not-A may sound plausible). So the chance that such a small
sample appears to show evidence for _some_ plausible-sounding but incorrect
hypothesis is actually very high.

~~~
wch
I agree that there is a general problem that researchers go on fishing
expeditions with their data. But having a small sample size doesn't make it
any more likely to find a false positive.

We've already agreed that a small sample size doesn't make it any more likely
to find a false positive for a given hypothesis. This is true for H1, H2, H3,
etc., where each of these is a hypothesis. Therefore the aggregate effect of
testing N different hypotheses is that you're no more likely to find a false
positive with a small sample size vs a large sample size. You are more likely
to have false negatives with small samples, though.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _But having a small sample size doesn 't make it any more likely to find a
> false positive._

It does. Try and test a die for load. Let's say your prior probability of the
dice being loaded is 50%, because this is a real shady place you're gambling
in. You further know (based on the game you're playing) that if your die is
loaded, it will land with these frequencies:

    
    
      1: 1/3 of the time.
      2: 1/6 of the time.
      3: 1/6 of the time.
      4: 1/6 of the time.
      5: 1/6 of the time.
      6: almost never
    

Now, you will throw the die on the table a number of times to test it for
load. Each throw will give you some evidence. If I've got my calculations
correct, landing a 6 nearly guarantees the die isn't loaded, landing one gives
you 1 bit of evidence that it's loaded, and landing anything else doesn't tell
you anything.

Now what is the probability for false positive? Well… With only one throw, you
will land 1 one times out of six, giving you a posterior probability
distribution of 2/3 loaded, 1/3 genuine (this is as close as you will get to a
false positive).

With 2 throws, it's a bit more complicated:

    
    
      1    , 1    :  1/36 : loaded with 80% probability
      1    , [2-5]:  8/36 : loaded with 67% probability
      6    , [1-6]: 11/36 : definitely genuine
      [2-5], [2-5]: 16/36 : no evidence
    

And so on, as you throw the die over and over again. I'll spare you the
calculations, but the simple thing is, the die will get more and more chances
to eventually land a 6, rendering the "definitely genuine" observation more
and more probable (1 - (5/6)^number_of_throws), and the false positives less
and less believable.

Okay, this _is_ a contrived example. But sufficiently large sample sizes do
indeed reduce the risk of false positives. It's just that some result are so
clear cut that they don't need large sample sizes to reach a conclusion
reliably.

~~~
wch
You're getting "false positive" with the method you've chosen, but it's not a
method that would be accepted in a scientific paper as evidence for an
experimental effect. Maybe your method is more appropriate for, say, a machine
learning context, but it's not what would be used in a paper like this.

First, the statistical tests used for these experiments don't make use of
Bayesian stats, so the prior 50%-loaded probability simply isn't factored in.
The standard is to use null-hypothesis testing, which says roughly, that if
the null hypothesis is true -- that is, if there is no actual difference
between the populations (experimental groups A and B, for example) -- what is
the probability that you'd see a pattern like the one observed in the data.
And the tests take sample size into account in calculating this probability.

If you throw the die once, the test that you'd use here (Chi-square) would
_never_ give you a false positive, that is a p-value of <.05. With small
samples, there is too little power to get a the requisite p-value. (And I'll
note that Chi-square is one of the tests used in these papers.)

There's a whole other debate about whether p-values and null hypothesis tests
are the right thing to use, whether the standard 0.05 threshold p-value is
small enough, whether Bayesian stats should be used, etc. These are legitimate
issues. But they're separate from the claim that small samples will increase
the likelihood of a false positive.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Standards statistics are erroneous. Bayesian statistics are correct. End of
story.

 _(I know of the debates. For all I care Bayesians have won by an overwhelming
margin. The only advantage of Frequentist statistics is their relative ease of
use. But in the search for truth, you just can 't escape Probability Theory.
Period. My method wouldn't be accepted in a paper? Then fuck the papers. I'm
not trying to get published, I'm trying to get to the truth_.)

I don't have the proof nailed down, but based on the examples I can come up
with, I'm _extremely_ confident that as long as you use probability theory
correctly, small sample sizes do increase the chance of false positives. On
the other hand, those false positives will be weaker than the exceptional
false positive you might get from larger sample sizes. (Imagine I throw the
dice 30 times, and I get zero 6 and 10 ones? It's very rare, but it would make
me all the more confident the die is loaded.) If you use that crappy outdated
Frequentist junk, however, all bets are off.

\---

Note however that in a sense, you are correct: by conservation of expected
evidence, the weighted average of evidence you expect is exactly zero: if it
were not, you would already have changed your belief at the point of
equilibrium. Which means that if you expect lots of weak evidence in one
direction, you also expect a little, and very strong, evidence on the other
side.

I'm not sure this is what you where getting at, though.

\---

When we do null-hypothesis testing, we _do_ assume a prior: using smaller
p-values means we're more skeptics towards the competing hypothesis —we have a
stronger prior belief for their fallacy. But we don't _speak_ the word
"prior", so we can pat ourselves on the back for our "objectivity", and scold
the Bayesian for his "subjectivity". Priors, what arrogance. Who is _he_ to
believe so and so in the first place? We do science, not faith.

Only we're blind to our own priors.

------
taeric
Seeing one of the opening paragraphs say "The right font choice along with the
absence of sidebars and popups makes everything feel easier and better to
read" while being distracted by the bloody sidebar and ad on this site is
rather interesting.

~~~
arrrg
It appears that this website bought the rights to publish this article from
the author.

The original article appears to have been posted on the author’s blog quite
some time ago: [https://ooomf.com/blog/the-science-behind-fonts-and-how-
they...](https://ooomf.com/blog/the-science-behind-fonts-and-how-they-make-
you-feel/)

As such criticising contradictions between website design and what the article
advocates makes even less sense than it usually does.

~~~
taeric
Well, in that case it makes it even more amusing. They are paying to get the
ability to post a story, but aren't even following it. It would be one thing
if they posted some sort of rebuttal, but posting a "best practice" style
thing in obvious violation of it is rather amusing. (Granted, it is not a
criticism of the article.)

I do think there is still more handwaving in the article than I'd care for. In
very few cases was it a small change in font that made a difference. And, even
then, it is still artistic in nature. Pretty things make people more trusting
and happy. Some fonts are prettier than others.

~~~
toggle
To be fair, the three sites the author holds up as good examples (Medium,
37signals' blog, and Zen Habits) are not being run for a profit. Having to
monetize a site does make it much harder to keep the layout clean -- ads are
_supposed_ to catch your eye, after all.

------
araes
There does seem to be an assumption that making your reader "feel better"
while they read is a good thing. However, the tactics in the article may
actually be counter to what a lot of websites want - I.E. the Cracked example.
Your eyes "squinting and darting", and the need to "second guess what you
should be reading" is actually desirable. They want you to read more /
different content on their site. Its possibly more desirable for you to feel
distracted and vaguely unsatisfied by the experience, because then you're
hunting for the next hit.

Admittedly, there's still a presentation difference between places like
Cracked (fuggly blog style) and sites with similar motives (Reddit / HN). In
that case though, the deciding feature is mostly minimalism (list
presentation, no huge ads, no content tiles, limited social content links,
very light scripting). Similar to why I prefer them over traditional blog
layout news sites (Reuters, CNN, ect...) as the initial step of surveying the
days events has Way less overhead.

~~~
dredmorbius
Maybe it's just getting old, but with time I find I've got vastly less
patience for cluttered sites. I installed the Stylebot Chrome plugin last May
when Google+ rolled out its redesign and my eyes bled. Since then, I've
created styles for some 850-odd sites, many quite brief, some longer.

The elements I attack:

⚫ Anything that moves. Animations, sliders, pop-ups.

⚫ Fixed elements: headers, footers, fixed-position social bars.

⚫ Fonts. My preferred reading font is 15pt (about 20px on this display). Most
sites seem to run between 12-14px, which is painfully small.

⚫ Crappy contrast. Backgrounds should be light.

⚫ Anything "social". If I want to share your content, I've got a perfectly
good URL with which to do it.

⚫ Interstitials. If you're relying on those for advertising or messaging, I'll
see them precisely once.

⚫ Sidebars. I either nuke them entirely, or de-columnize the page. See:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1tniu3/user_sit...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1tniu3/user_site_restyling_multicolumn_vs_fullwidth/)

⚫ I find call-outs and images floated to the right rather than the left less
annoying (at least in ltr languages). So I move those elements to float right,
clear right, and pad with 10px (or 0.5 em), add a 1px border, and a 20px (or
1em) margin. Often a shadow drop for images just for grins (see above).

⚫ I find a blue link color is far less distracting than other alternatives.
Many sites seem to prefer red/orange links (they stand out), my usual
preference these days is for #1e6b8c (or something close to it).

⚫ I've found both drop caps and bold leading lines useful in some cases for
affordance -- especially in streams of aggregated content where practice of
the originating source doesn't include strong ledes, these at least allow you
to find the start of a post easily.

The saddest overall impression is that most web design is actively hostile to
reading.

------
Kronopath
For those interested in reading more, I must once again recommend Matthew
Butterick's online ebook Practical Typography
([http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/)) as a
simple, no-nonsense guide to creating good written documents and websites. I
used many of the tips and tricks from that to redesign my personal website
([http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-
day/](http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-day/)) and I think I got
something pretty decent, despite not being a trained designer. Medium was a
bit of an inspiration for me as well.

------
coldpie
> 2\. Pick a font size bigger than 12pt

> However, as more reading shifts to digital and screen resolutions improve,
> the way we read content is changing. Many designers mention that 16pt font
> is the new 12pt font. A recent study has also shown that larger font sizes
> can elicit a stronger emotional connection.

This is an interesting one. I have actually found myself frequently using the
zoom-out feature of web browsers to make the font type smaller. I viewed the
Kickstarter "2013 year" slideshow that's been making the rounds at about 20%,
because I found the huge font they used extremely uncomfortable to read.

I didn't zoom out this particular article, but playing with the zoom level, I
find 80% works about best for me.

I wonder why I feel so differently about this issue than current designers do.

~~~
coldpie
That aside,

> By changing the font and increasing it’s size, our email content felt much
> better.

bad grammar can ruin your article faster than any font choice :)

------
userbinator
I've set my browser to use a fixed-width font (similar to the X terminal ones
but with some minor improvements like slashed zero) and override the sizes,
precisely so I don't have to deal with some horrible choices some websites
make. I use what works best for me.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd done that for quite a while, but found it broke far too many navigation
elements.

You _can_ accomplish that, though, either through your browser preferences, by
using a userContent.css override stylesheet, or with site-specific stylesheet
overrides (I use Stylebot for this, Stylish is another option).

But, absolute agreement on the crappy design decisions many sites make.

------
btbuildem
FWIW, I routinely use
[https://www.readability.com/](https://www.readability.com/) \- very few
websites are actually readable.

------
toggle
He's wrong when he says that Medium uses a 22pt font. They have a 22 PIXEL
font. 22px is much smaller than 22pt. (37signals' blog and Zen Habits also
have a 20-something pixel font size, not 20-something points).

Otherwise, this was a pretty decent overview. A lot of programming-focused
sites ignore good practices about line lengths and font size.

------
3stripe
I would love to see some of the design principles from this article applied to
Hacker News.

~~~
dredmorbius
Here's a rough stab at it:

[http://stylebot.me/styles/2945](http://stylebot.me/styles/2945)

------
Uncompetative
[https://ooomf.com/blog/the-science-behind-fonts-and-how-
they...](https://ooomf.com/blog/the-science-behind-fonts-and-how-they-make-
you-feel/)

Do yourself a favour and read it here as it was intended.

------
roadster72
TBH, I stopped reading it because I really do not like the font used on the
website.

~~~
ollysb
The font was very comfortable to read on my old 3GS, what type of screen are
you reading on? Regarding serif fonts, I've certainly found a new appreciation
for them since getting a laptop with a retina screen.

~~~
ankitoberoi
I'm on Macbook 13.3-inch LED widescreen display and do not like the font
either.

Since the majority of internet users have much less pixels per inch as
compared to the retina, I think it should be best for websites to use san
serif.

~~~
ollysb
Actually, looking at it on my laptop it looks far better if I zoom up a couple
of notches.

------
rthomas6
Following the idea that poor layout make a reader feel bad when reading, I
wonder if it would be advantageous to purposefully evoke this feeling when
writing hit pieces or about something bad that happened?

~~~
gdubs
Seems to be a technique used in negative political campaign ads.

