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Subject:RE: Readability: Robin Williams' take From:"Locke, David" <dlocke -at- bindview -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 8 Mar 2000 09:50:30 -0600
Serif v. San Serif is culturally bound. You can't test readability on
non-readers, and by the time they learn to read, and probably before that
they have learned the cultural preference for one or the other. If you test
this against European readers, everything you say about Serif in the U.S.
will be the case with San Serif.
At the STC conference in Anaheim a few years ago, the HF people were saying
that usability isn't interesting anymore, because it was too focused on
perceptual capabilities our nervous system. At some point it became obvious
that they had to pull back and deal with norms rather than limits. In
addition, there were enough validated studies underlying the guidelines that
the guidelines could be used for audits. Experimentation was getting
redundant.
As are discussions on Serif v. San Serif. Did you check the archive first? I
know we discussed this before. And, probably will do so again!
