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One may be dismayed to find out that most things in design haven't been proved conclusively (in a scientific way). There are many reasons for this, but I think

One may be dismayed to find out that most things in design haven't been proved conclusively (in a scientific way). There are many reasons for this, but I think it all boils down to the difficulty of measuring how the human mind reacts when interacting with something. What we have nailed down is the effects of those interactions: clickthroughs, purchases, and such. So, when you try to perform an experiment about legibility you usually apply a comprehension test and measure the speed at which the text was read. In science you should isolate as many variables as possible, but I think in the case of typography there's just too many factors at play: the content, the medium and the reader introduce too much noise into the experiments. I think that in the future brain imaging will advance enough to study how much people are able to concentrate with different typefaces. A researcher might give you an essay written in Comic Sans and see your mind wander more often than other subjects reading the same essay in Times.

pekk 14y ago
If most things in design haven't been proved conclusively, that would just mean that design as a field doesn't take research seriously and doesn't insist on a strong empirical basis. You don't need to wait for unspecified advances in neuroimaging. The basic research can be done 50 years ago. You measure the mind with behavior, end of story. That part is as easy as A/B testing. Just do it. If you go to neuroimaging, you should first know why it is relevant and worth spending the $$$. And your feeling that the factors you suppose to be important are too many shouldn't ever stop us from looking into it. When we really get down to brass tacks on a subject, it's common to find that a lot of the factors we suppose to be important contribute negligibly to the final outcome. You just don't know which these are until you look.

pekk 14y ago

If most things in design haven't been proved conclusively, that would just mean that design as a field doesn't take research seriously and doesn't insist on a strong empirical basis. You don't need to wait for unspecified advances in neuroimaging. The basic research can be done 50 years ago. You measure the mind with behavior, end of story. That part is as easy as A/B testing. Just do it. If you go to neuroimaging, you should first know why it is relevant and worth spending the $$$. And your feeling that the factors you suppose to be important are too many shouldn't ever stop us from looking into it. When we really get down to brass tacks on a subject, it's common to find that a lot of the factors we suppose to be important contribute negligibly to the final outcome. You just don't know which these are until you look.