Researchers Create 'Sans Forgetica,' a Memory-Boosting Font (cnn.com)

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: CNN reports on a new font that is purposely designed to more easily help students recall academic materials they read. From the report: "Australian researchers say their new font, called Sans Forgetica, could be the tool to help people retain information. The typeface, which slants to the side and has gaps in the middle, is not easy on the eyes. But according to the team at RMIT University in Australia who conceived Sans Forgetica, it has the perfect combination of 'obstruction' needed to recall information. The multidisciplinary team of typographic design specialists and psychologists said they designed Sans Forgetica using the learning principle called 'desirable difficulty.' The principle means that when obstruction is added to the learning process, people are required to make a little more effort and end up having better memory retention.

With normal fonts 'readers often glance over them and no memory trace is created,' RMIT senior lecturer Janneke Blijlevens said in a statement. Conversely, if a font is too difficult, memory is not retained. 'Sans Forgetica lies at a sweet spot where just enough obstruction has been added to create that memory retention,' she said. To get to that sweet spot, the researchers tested various fonts with roughly 400 Australian university students in a laboratory and an online experiment 'where fonts with a range of obstructions were tested to determine which led to the best memory retention,' RMIT said. 'Sans Forgetica broke just enough design principles without becoming too illegible and aided memory retention,' RMIT said."

Comments

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[rtb61]

Not quite, it will inherently diminish understanding because it simply requires more mental effort to read ie that greater mental effort required to read it, of course stimulates greater recall because you are putting much more mental effort in, especially when tired. Anyone outside of silly people using it, well no because it takes considerably more mental effort to read, greater pattern association processing is required, the problem there, it inherently will diminish thought being put into understanding what has been read, you really want to get that understanding in as early as possible to build a proper mental framework for more study. Japanese have a similar problem, with so much effort required to learn the Japanese language, it diminishes the amount that can be learned using the Japanese language.

Same with this font, test well in theory but it will diminish overall learning, beyond rote learning, so more effort consumed in the learning process, resulting in less learned. Of course if you write notes by hand, well, good luck. It is far better to sit through a lecture with pencil and pad, than with a computer, unless you want to spend that lecture time completing other assignments .

Re: My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[TimMD909]

I have glaucoma. My vision in my right eye has suffered. It's harder to read for me now. These are facts. Now to my idea you inspired: my reading comprehension has seemed to improve as I have to spend more effort in focusing my eyes to read. I think it's a function of how much time I spend reading sentences. I was rushing when I should have spent time contemplating each sentence. Now I'm forced to, in a sense. Could it be simply as easy as re-reading every sentence to gain the same benefits this font claims it has? Basically, just slow the fuck down?

Won't eat their own dog food

[Chris Mattern]

I noticed that their site doesn't use the font except when it shows you examples. The site content text doesn't use it.