As luck would have it, a Carthaginian quinquireme ran aground as it tried to blockade the Romans who were trying to ferry across to Sicily in borrowed boats. Once caught, this enemy ship is supposed to have provided the Romans with the prototype they needed. In fact the build of the ship was so structured (numbered pieces)  - for the Romans it was almost like putting together a piece of flatpack furniture. As a result the Romans were easily able to copy and reproduce the warship and set their sights on the seas.

But war at sea requires far more than simply the tools, the method for defeating the enemy involved ramming the enemy ship which in itself required a great deal of skill and experience from the crew.

The Romans didn’t have these skills but instead modified the design to allow for the battering element to become a bridge – to allow their troops to quickly gain access to the enemy ship and effectively take part in a land based style battle (something they were much better at). The rest as they say is history.

So let’s remember not to re-invent the wheel, but instead build on others success, but at the same time if we want to be truly successful we must add to the solution with something that’s new – something which might just change the entire game.

So I will be asking on my next project – what am I doing that is new and innovative to build on those great foundations provided by others. If I’m not – I’m probably likely to lose the larger battle.

• Fluency studies demonstrate how we have the potential to make big improvements in the performance of our communications
• It has been found that students remembered and retained information better when it was presented in a disfluent (ugly) font.
• You may be able to increase users memory retention of detailed product information by presenting it dis-fluently.
• Could dis-fluency affect design too?

Background

I heard a fascinating interview on the Radio4 the other morning. On it the blogger and researcher Jonah Lehrer was describing a recent study into memory retention.

Here’s the current thinking –  “Many education researchers and practitioners believe that reducing extraneous cognitive load is always beneficial for the learner”. Therefore it has been widely accepted that simpler, more readable fonts – should reduce congnitive burden and therefore aid memory.

Well that seems very logical.

But Jonah had an aching worry – that – as it becomes easier to consume information, the less information will be retained. In his blog post “The future of reading” he describes his thoughts.

Scientific corroboration

In a follow up post “The benefit of ugly fonts” he reports on a recent scientific study – in which students were given supplementary material in a variety of disfluent fonts (Monotype Corsiva, Comic Sans Italicized and Haettenshweiler) while the other group was taught with the usual mixture of Helvetica and Arial. The font size remained the same.

After several weeks of instruction, the students were then tested on their retention of the material. In every class except chemistry, the students in the disfluent condition performed significantly better than those in the control-fluent condition. Here are the scientists:

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….

The potential for improving educational practices through cognitive interventions is immense. If a simple change of font can significantly increase student performance, one can only imagine the number of beneficial cognitive interventions waiting to be discovered. Fluency demonstrates how we have the potential to make big improvements in the performance of our students and education system as a whole.

Jonah went on to talk about the impications this might have on graphic design and therefore web and user experience design – which immediately woke me up on my drive through the rain into work.

So what are the implications?

On the face of it this could mean that all visual communication where we want people to remember our message should be in a disfluent (ugly) font.

Hmm – are we jumping the gun here?

I think there is one big difference between the control group and the type of communications marketers and advertisers are involved in.

Within the school setting people are reading material they ‘want and desire to read and retain’, and it seems, from this study conclusive that in these circumstances retention can be increased.

But in the world of marketing communications we are often trying to ‘capture’ peoples attention – they don’t have to read our messages – and are probably distracted with a load of different cognitive burdens. So maybe putting our main marketing messages in disfluent fonts won’t help increase response rates. The key for this type of communication is simply ‘communicating the message at all’ and therefore the simpler the message the more likely it is to communicate.

The design and use of fonts should all act in a way as to communicate the message as a whole. A disfluent font might be appropriate or inappropriate for any given communication.

An example

An organic farm shop’s might produce some labelling for a product. The use of  flowing fonts with ligatures and complex shapes will help communicate the nature of the product. In fact, if the packaging was in minimalist Helvetica, and poorly executed I might have second thoughts on the quality or authenticity of the product.

The opposite might be said for a company selling super modern minimalist furniture.

But wait a minute there IS something to this. Maybe its when we come to presenting detailed information (like product information and technical information) that we can start considering more awkward and disfluent fonts. After all at this point the person has made a commitment to read the information – just like the students – and is therefore likely to be more willing to retain the information and recall it later.

Conclusion

When marketers and designs are trying to capture a person’s attention, or communicate a very important message , the focus should be on the message, which the use of typography should support.

When a user is reading though longer pieces of material – and have made a commitment to read (think product description and details), then maybe we should consider presenting the information in a more disfluent font.

Parting thoughts

As the scientists say – “The potential for improving educational practices through cognitive interventions is immense”. Could fluency affect both design as well as type? On the face of it as a designer I would say no. Design is all about balance, harmony and rhythm – is that fluent or disfluent?

As a user experience designer I spend every moment of my working life trying to reduce cognitive burden by making information more accessible and ‘easier’ to consume – but if disfluency applied to design too then is this could be turned on its head?

According to a Smashing Magazine article on pagination “In most cases pagination is better than traditional “previous – next” navigation as it offers visitors a more quick and convenient navigation through the site. It’s not a must, but a useful nice-to-have-feature.” And there are plenty of examples and design patterns out there some of which give really powerful control to users. But there’s a problem…

The problem with some pagination

The problem that the majority of websites and design patterns fail to address is to cater well for the default behaviour whilst giving people all then options they might desire.

Consider the design of the TV set. Manufacturers and designers have realised that although it’s important to be able to adjust the contrast without a remote control, it is not a default behaviour – and therefore it is ok to hide the controls at the side of the set, maybe even covered by a discreet door.

Well, coming back to pagination, how many users are going to need to go to exactly page twenty two, or twenty three or twenty four? (On a side note – if people are forced to remember page numbers to locate an item then you’re probably already doing something wrong in your user interface). I often find it hard – particularly when using mobile devices to activate a tiny > link when its crowded out by ten other page numbers and other links.

Designing using the normal distribution curve.

Throughout product design and architecture the design brief is shaped by what’s called the normal distribution.  It all gets a bit statistical and mathematical but in lamens terms it is a term used to describe how/where the majority of people fit within a normal distribution curve.

If you look at the heights of a group of adults, you’ll probably notice that most of them look about the same height. A few may be noticeably taller and a few may be noticeably shorter. This ’same height’ will be near the average (called the ‘mean’ in statistics) and is shown in anthropometry tables as the fiftieth percentile, often written as ‘50th %ile’. This means that it is the most likely height in a group of people. ¹

The beauty of the normal distribution curve is that it is so universal in its application. Chart people’s average height and you will get a normal distribution curve. How about weight, music taste, there are so many things it will describe – because it in itself is describing a random distribution around a mean/average value.

In other words it “is a continuous probability distribution that is often used as a first approximation to describe real-valued random variables that tend to cluster around a single mean value”. ²

So what does that mean for design

Well in the world of furniture design for example – you may not be able to make a workbench ‘height adjustable’ – so what you do it make sure that it caters for as many people as possible.

Deciding whether to use the 5th, 50th or 95th percentile value depends on what you are designing and who you are designing it for.

Usually, you will find that if you pick the right percentile, 95% of people will be able to use your design. For instance, if you were choosing a door height, you would choose the dimension of people’s height (often called ’stature’ in anthropometry tables) and pick the 95th percentile value – in other words, you would design for the taller people. You wouldn’t need to worry about the average height people, or the 5th percentile ones – they would be able to fit through the door anyway. ³

Hypothesis on how this applies to pagination

So how would a normal dictribution curve apply to our pagination. Stats on pagination are pretty difficult to come by but  I believe it could look something like this.

Now in this case the curve would actually be rather squared but I just wanted to illustrate how it fits with the normal distribution model.

Possible solutions

So for pagination it would seem to make sense to design for the 50th percentile – which is likely to cover  95% of use. But thats not all – we can actually cater for the final 5% of users by giving them less prominent options – just like in the TV example.

Therefore I propose that designers should provide people with large, usable and pleasing hit areas for the default behaviours of moving backward and forward and then supplementing this with the feature rich pagination toolkit of their choice.

My preferred solution

I believe that any solution should be designed to fit the specifics of an interface. That said simply highlighting the back and next and then adding in any complex pagination features into an overlay would seem like a good place to start. I’d love to know what you think.

• ¹Anthropometry – step by step – http://www.ergonomics4schools.com/lzone/anthropometry.htm
• ² Normal distribution – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution_curve
• ¹Anthropometry – step by step – http://www.ergonomics4schools.com/lzone/anthropometry.htm

How often have you battled to get an appointment with the doctor, taken time out of work, only to arrive and then sit in the doctors surgery for 45 minutes because they are running late (which they always are).

A simple text message sent to every patient booked in – say – 1 hour before their appointment – indicating ‘how’ late the surgery is running could not only mean much quieter waiting rooms, but also a much more positive (and less frustrating) experience for the individual, not to mention the millions of pounds which the economy would gain in productivity.

A clear example of where a little experience design could not only benefit the user, but also other users, the service operator and the country as a whole.

User Centred Design and Experience Design are both schools of thought with one clear goal – to make users lives better. People who know me will testify that trying to make users lives better is one of my primary motivations when it comes to approaching web design.

Some usability reasearch appears to ignore the emotional, which I believe is a key part of the overall experience. I think advertisers know this, which is probably why we have so much advertising based on humour. Creating a positive emotional response from somebody is pretty much akin to making a friend. Except its not you making a friend, its your brand. And thats going to be far more long lasting than any tactical great deal or offer (although friends do like favours!)

As such I was thrilled to read the “Experience Design Manifesto” – written by Andrë Braz.

In the manifesto Andre outlines his ideas for what Experience Design should do which includes the following points.

Experiences that foster happiness should have the following qualities:

• Make people feel confident of themselves.
• Make people feel they can do something better. Empowers people to do something in a better way.
• Improve people’s lives helping to solve existing pragmatic problems
• Make people have an enjoyable and fun time during the experience, thus making life worth to be lived.
• Surprises people in a magic way, bringing delight to the eyes and making the mind wonder.
• Create an emotional connection between everyone involved, the experience itself and the one supporting the experience (a brand or a person)
• Make the world a better place to live
• Strenghten relationships between people that live the same experience

Read the “Experience Design Manifesto” – written by Andrë Braz.

Experience Design Manifesto