38 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

It comes down a subjective opinion, since it hasn't been proven that it's harder to read. In fact, the author of this article (PhD pyschology and author Susan Weinschenk) makes a comment on the article you posted and rebutes with her own research:

 

http://www.blog.thet...harder-to-read/

 

I've actually read her book: 100 Things designers should know about people. I would definitely suggest it because it sounds like I'm talking to another designer.

 

Anyways, I personally like all caps, especially for a medieval time period. But, I can see how it's offputting because it's not done very often.

 

That link actually does say that capital letters are harder to read. Or rather, it says that because we never really read in all-caps we have a harder time reading all-cap messages because we're unfamiliar with them. Whether all-caps are somehow hard in principle to read as some sort of absolute rule or hard to read until you have 100s of hours of practice reading them, the initial issue is the same: annoyance. 

[atum]

It comes down a subjective opinion, since it hasn't been proven that it's harder to read. In fact, the author of this article (PhD pyschology and author Susan Weinschenk) makes a comment on the article you posted and rebutes with her own research:

 

http://www.blog.thet...harder-to-read/

 

I've actually read her book: 100 Things designers should know about people. I would definitely suggest it because it sounds like I'm talking to another designer.

 

Anyways, I personally like all caps, especially for a medieval time period. But, I can see how it's offputting because it's not done very often.

 

Interesting link, thank you.

 

However I dont think it's at all subjective.  When they chose that font they knew (or should have known) the majority of people would have more trouble reading it.

 

She says it is just that people arent used to all caps but provides no evidence.  Then she finally agrees that people should not be using all caps, and that it is harder for most people to read.

 

All capital (uppercase) letters are slower for people to read, but only because they aren’t used to them. Mixed case text is only faster to read than uppercase letters because of practice. Most of what you read is mixed case, and so you are used to it. If people practice reading text that is in all capital letters they can get to the point where they are reading that text as fast as they usually read mixed case. This doesn’t mean you should start using uppercase or capital letters for all of your text.

 

 

The main Microsoft article she links to doesnt make a claim on upper-vs-lower case -- it just talks about "word shape".  She appears to make the next leap in logic, that this "proves" all uppercase is just fine, herself.  While I am suprisingly, and graciously convinced/corrected that parralell letter combos are how people recognize words, she doesnt prove anything about capital letters. 

 

I bet all caps make it harder to recognize letter pairs (as was thought they made word shape hard to distinguish). Lower case letters are more distictive and less blocky.  She also didnt talk much about how much more space cpaital letters take up and thus what problems that would cause.

 

Either way that was a good read.  I wish I had seen your post earlier. Thank you again for the link.  I do very much disagree that it is subjective though.

Modifié par atum, 07 décembre 2014 - 07:44 .

[Jlcebrian]

There is nothing subjective about upper case being harder to read.

 

That article is pure bullshit. It quotes good research and then jumps to unrelated conclusions, logic be damned. Regardless of the way we recognise letter sequences, lower case letters have more distinct features and clearly stand out in comparison.

 

Not to mention even if someone blindly believe the article, she still says upper case letters are more difficult to read for most! She just moves the goalposts and argues that it is probably a matter of practice. So, even if that were the case, the game designers were still wrong.

[ReinaHW]

The small text is very annoying, even with excellent eye sight like I've got it is very hard to read.  In a game that has a lot of text in it form the lore to quests, subtitles and more then you would expect for the text to be at a perfectly readable size, but ever since Mass Effect 2 Bioware have been using very, very small text in their games and not fixing it when people remark on how hard it is to read the text.

 

Surely they could do something about the text issue, improve the size somehow, have an adjustable font size in the options menu, something that can help make the text readable.  Text this size or a little bigger is just fine, text this size in a game is not readable and not acceptable.

Please Bioware, if you are reading this, please do something about the text size so that we can read everything in the game.

[atum]

The small text is very annoying, even with excellent eye sight like I've got it is very hard to read.  In a game that has a lot of text in it form the lore to quests, subtitles and more then you would expect for the text to be at a perfectly readable size, but ever since Mass Effect 2 Bioware have been using very, very small text in their games and not fixing it when people remark on how hard it is to read the text.

 

Surely they could do something about the text issue, improve the size somehow, have an adjustable font size in the options menu, something that can help make the text readable.  Text this size or a little bigger is just fine, text this size in a game is not readable and not acceptable.

Please Bioware, if you are reading this, please do something about the text size so that we can read everything in the game.

 

 

To be clear, I have no issue with the font size (I am on PC).  But I fully support people who are asking for a way to set the font size themselves.  In a game with so much reading, it should be a core feature.

[ReinaHW]

On consoles many are finding it very hard to read the text due to how small it is, so a font adjustment option for console and PC owners of the game would be very welcome.

[Serza]

Sorry to bump my own post, but in case anyone is wondering why text is harder to read in all caps here's a site that explains it:

 

http://uxmovement.co...-users-to-read/

 

MAYBE YOU NEED TO CHILL OUT MATE, I HAVE NO PROBLEM READING THAT STUFF.

 

I'm so sorry...

[atum]

MAYBE YOU NEED TO CHILL OUT MATE, I HAVE NO PROBLEM READING THAT STUFF.

 

I'm so sorry...

 

[ky9]

Fellow graphic designer, I salute you! Haha. Seriously though, I had the exact same thought as I was playing through the game and tried my best to dismiss it, figuring it was just my personal designer nerdiness cropping up again. But I did eventually find that it affected me in a noticeable way, when I realized I was skimming through text even when I was interested in what I was reading. The big, chunky, upper case font they used is not meant to be used as body text, and I could feel my eyeballs getting annoyed before I even really realized it. Not only that, but reading text on a screen also further impacts readability. Not game breaking, but hey - this is the feedback and suggestion thread after all.

[Shazzie]

I love to read. Seriously, I love, love, LOVE to read, and I have ever since I was a wee pre-school thing hiding underneath the bedcovers with a flashlight and a Dick & Jane novel trying to sneak some reading time in after bedtime when I was supposed to be sleeping. My house flooded last year and my husband & I lost roughly 800 books (in softback, hardback, comic, and graphic novel format). Out of all the things we lost, and the absolute horrible near-year-long recovery/reconstruction of our house, it was only the loss of those books that made me cry.

 

As much as I love to read, and though I typically adore reading every bit of flavor text in any and every game I play, I find myself seldom reading the majority of codex entries in this game.  I find it uncomfortable and unpleasant, so this a very saddening issue to me. I keep telling myself 'I'll just read them later', but whenever I start, I never get very far. I WANT to read these, I want to very much, but it's just too irritating.

 

I would greatly appreciate the option to change the font, so that I can enjoy reading my codex. I'm fine with the current font when it's for smaller-chunk reading, but the longer the entry is, the more unpleasant I find it to read.

[RenAdaar]

I actually like the large all caps text. I can read the game text far better in inquisition then I could in DA:O and DA2. 

[Patrickula]

I'm a professional UX designer and this makes me crazy. I can't bring myself to read 95% of the codex entries, no matter how great the lore seems like it might be. I just can't get past the ALL CAPS WALLS OF SERIF TEXT

 

There's another font in use in the game elsewhere that isn't all caps, why not use that? I'd even take Comic Sans (hat-top to viva pinata) over Copperplate for legibility of body text any day. Even an all caps sans-serif would be an improvement over an all-caps serif. It's agonizing.

 

I'm amazed there isn't more complaint around about this, so maybe it's just my designer eye, but an option to switch the body type would be such a relief.

[Nomen Mendax]

I'm amazed there isn't more complaint around about this, so maybe it's just my designer eye, but an option to switch the body type would be such a relief.

It could be that most people don't read the codex entries (this wouldn't surprise me at all). In any case, I completely agree with the OP - using an upper case font was a bizarre choice.