Reading Performance with Large Fonts on High Resolution Displays

摘要

New in this study is the finding that reading speed on electronic displays can approach printed text. The finding that most subjects still prefer to read printed text rather than electronic displays is also new, and has implications for design factors. We speculate that although part of the preference is almost certainly due to experience (most people of the ages our subjects are grew up reading printed materials) another part of the preference is probably due to ergonomic factors. Would the preference disappear, for example, if the electronic displays were able to be positioned for maximal reading comfort, as printed text is? The fact that reading speeds for printed text and the two AMLCD displays tended to be faster than CRT is not related to resolution per se, because the resolution of the CRT and of the Apple Cinema were quite similar. This study was limited to an investigation of spatial resolution only, and it seems likely that if reading speeds on the CRT are indeed slower, they were due to temporal resolution factors related to the raster refresh process inherent in such displays. This remains to be tested in future work. Finally, the conclusions drawn here relate only to large fonts, which do not challenge the spatial resolution ability of the human user. While it is clear that reading performance is very good on AMLCD's, and that it is indistinguishable from printed text, whether that relationship remains when font size is reduced remains to be determined.