On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjorsch@wikimedia.orgwrote:
What does "neutrality" mean in the context of a font?
I'm having trouble figuring out what "authority" might actually mean besides "Does this seem familiar to me from sites I use for reference?".
These are not terms with a purely objective measurement Brad, even if they have a dictionary definition. It's a qualitative, subjective assessment. As a secondary part of the design goals (behind readability) is to convey these subjective qualities, you have to use a subjective measurement system.
Something this subjective could probably do with a much more diverse sample.
Agreed, it would be awesome if we could make a little Surveymonkey to let anyone do this blind test. Though I wouldn't necessarily trust Wikitech readers not to use browser devtools to cheat. ;-)
A fun example of how similar qualities can be measured is the following experiment in trustworthiness of fonts: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o...
I actually consulted our research and data team (Dario Taraborelli and Aaron Halfaker) about whether we should A/B test the beta with readers. Their reply was that a split test was not likely to produce statistically significant results in reader-related metrics like time on site, pageviews per unique visitor, etc. and that we have a great deal of trouble measuring these things with precision anyway. Producing a muddled and potentially flawed A/B test is much much worse than producing a small qualitative assessment that we know to take with a large grain of salt. :-)