A little reminder from Norway this week for sites with small fonts or non-scalable fonts: If letters on a screen go below a certain size, readers’ productivity goes down.
A new study from the Optometrics department at Buskerud University College in Norway shows that font size is very important. Readers do fine with a font size of 12 points (letters 3 mm tall) — but an 8-point font (2.4 mm tall) spells trouble. The researchers checked people’s efficiency at work and found that the 8-point font resulted in a 10 percent productivity decrease.
Says assistant professor Gunnar Horgen to PR bureau Newswire (in Norwegian): “This is quite a significant result. A lot of people find it harder to read small letters on a screen than on paper. Squinting should be unnecessary as long as fonts can easily be made larger.”
Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has of course been talking about font size for years, as in this 2002 Alertbox article.
Of course, Firefox users can easily adjust font size. However, both the Buskerud optometrists and Nielsen would probably prefer if users didn’t have to adjust their browsers. And as we know from the principle of least effort, people don’t really want to adjust anything at all. They want it served.
