On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
<bjorsch(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote:
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-…
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. :-)