::desirable difficulty for your brain::
October 7, 2018 5:57 PM   Subscribe

Sans Forgetica! The Font That Helps You Remember? Brought to you by Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the idea behind the new font was to create a slightly more difficult reading experience, forcing the reader to absorb each word as they stare at it. Wait until you see it.

It is based on a cognitive psychology concept called "desirable difficulty" that improves deep cognitive processing by adding a degree of difficulty to a task, which is needed for better memory retention.


[Mentionable: There is also a font that is supposed to help with dyslexia] Are there other helpful fonts?
posted by TangerineGurl (38 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
paging glonius keming, glonius keming to the annoying-typographic-decision phone
posted by lalochezia at 6:07 PM on October 7, 2018 [22 favorites]


A less technological but equally powerful solution is beer.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:11 PM on October 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


This strikes me as something that would show diminishing returns the more accustomed to the font you became.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:17 PM on October 7, 2018 [14 favorites]


So, back in the initial pack of stories about this typeface back in April, one piece mentioned this:

"Sans Forgetica was one of many tested at RMIT on 400 university students. Those who read text written in Sans Forgetica were able to recall 57 percent of it afterwards, compared to 50 percent for plain old' Arial."

That seems like a small sample size, and not a terribly big benefit.
posted by aurelian at 6:19 PM on October 7, 2018 [8 favorites]


This font reminds me that I have to clean the nozzles on my inkjet printer
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:23 PM on October 7, 2018 [17 favorites]


Hmm. Has this effect been validated on test subjects from a broad spectrum of sociocultural, ecoiomic, and geographic origins?

reads article

"...was tested by the RMIT business behavioural lab across many hundreds of RMIT students..."
posted by turbowombat at 6:25 PM on October 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Second try at citation link, since I screwed up.
posted by aurelian at 6:27 PM on October 7, 2018


Waht aobut sraclmibng teh wrods? ...Bumblesnoot Cramberbunch
posted by Query at 6:27 PM on October 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


[macro of guy tapping his temple, captioned “you can’t forget something you’ve read / if you couldn’t read it at all”]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:39 PM on October 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


That seems like a small sample size, and not a terribly big benefit.

I'd like to see the breakdown. If it -consistently- improved retention from 4-10%, say, then that would still be highly statistically significant despite the relatively small effect.

Given this looks much more like press release than paper they're not getting the benefit of the doubt from me yet though.
posted by solarion at 6:41 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


> glonius keming to the annoying-typographic-decision phone

I think I can speak for everyone here when I say all threads about a specific font ought to be rendered in that font.

If you were around then, you know what I'm talking about.
posted by glonous keming at 6:42 PM on October 7, 2018 [28 favorites]


I wonder what the licensing terms are for this font. I don't see any mention on the site itself about licensing for the font - they provide for free download, but what if I want to use the font for a project commercially, or adapt it in some way?

@aurelian & @turbowombat - agreed on sample size and demographics, but a 7% increase in retention wouldn't be anything to sneeze at if it holds true across demographics and in a larger sample of users. I'd certainly have been interested in retaining 7% more material back in my college days. :-)
posted by jzb at 6:43 PM on October 7, 2018


Oh absolutely. If it holds across a more global sample, a 7% improvement would be quite significant.

Of course it will probably be most immediately applied to help you retain malicious Facebook ads more betterer.

Sorry, this weekend has me in a pessimistic mood...
posted by turbowombat at 6:48 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also, the limitation stated in the article (not for big blocks of text) seems to preclude using this typeface to help students retain and process complex intellectual concepts...

But it sure seems good for sloganeering.
posted by turbowombat at 6:50 PM on October 7, 2018


This only feeds my conspiracy theory that all contemporary academic philosophy (and 60% of film theory and literary criticism) is designed to trick the reader into assuming that anything requiring that much effort to understand must be profound.
posted by eotvos at 7:22 PM on October 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


Those RMIT students who use that font definitely will have gaps in their education.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:31 PM on October 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


ಠ_ಠ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:39 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wow! If that really works, it might be an excellent choice for explaining the difference between a font and a typeface.
posted by 7segment at 8:43 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Arr, ye younguns and yer brainses!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:24 PM on October 7, 2018


And yer functionin' peepers!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:25 PM on October 7, 2018


What I'm curious about is, okay there's a 50% vs 57% measurable difference in rote recall... but what are the full consequences of switching to this font? Reading retention here is a specific and narrow metric, which nevertheless leaves the intellectual ends open-ended and unanswered. Optimizing for a metric has led many astray. For example, have they investigated any non-obvious downsides to using this font? Etc.
posted by polymodus at 10:15 PM on October 7, 2018


Oh ok kind of answers my concerns:

It is not designed to be used for large blocks of text
posted by polymodus at 10:17 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


This only feeds my conspiracy theory that all contemporary academic philosophy (and 60% of film theory and literary criticism) is designed to trick the reader into assuming that anything requiring that much effort to understand must be profound.

As opposed, I guess, to the all the media that is designed to trick the reader into not thinking at all? I know which I prefer.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:27 PM on October 7, 2018


It is the worst possible time for them to release this font, as I plan on entering graduate school for design and will later have the tools to write an article shredding this font apart. bwahahahaha.
posted by yueliang at 1:38 AM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


"...was tested by the RMIT business behavioural lab across many hundreds of RMIT students..."

If you're surprised, I have some bad news for you about pretty much all psychology research.
posted by hoyland at 2:07 AM on October 8, 2018 [5 favorites]


After seeing a blurb about this on another site, I set it as my default browser font. Bad gimmick font is ... actually not a problem at all, until you set the size a bit too small. At that point it suddenly becomes a mass of barely differentiated dots. Or, maybe I've just spent entirely too much time dealing with crap fonts.
posted by Enturbulated at 3:05 AM on October 8, 2018


the idea behind the new font was to create a slightly more difficult reading experience

I can do that with any font just by wearing reading glasses 0.5 diopter out in either direction.
posted by flabdablet at 4:04 AM on October 8, 2018


Just type everything umop episdn.
posted by Chitownfats at 4:05 AM on October 8, 2018 [3 favorites]


¿dlǝɥ oʇ pǝsoddns ʇɐɥʇ sᴉ ʍoɥ
posted by flabdablet at 4:10 AM on October 8, 2018 [4 favorites]


If it took 7% longer to read in the first place would they really be gaining anything?
posted by snofoam at 5:06 AM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


This strikes me as something that would show diminishing returns the more accustomed to the font you became.

As the second linked article states: "Sans Forgetica is not a typeface that's meant to be used for typesetting an entire novel or a book.

"It is specifically designed for very, very small highlights — and it'll be all the more powerful, the more constrained its usage "


For the kind of usage that's recommended, it's seems like it's not a case of having a text book printed in Sans Forgetica, but rather like using the font to do what highlighting key passages of a text in yellow highlighter used to do.
posted by layceepee at 5:44 AM on October 8, 2018


But, how many people with cognitive reading disorders are you going to lose because you added additional and unnecessary processing for your most important call-out text?

It's kind of like arguing that we'd get healthier students if we transitioned to standing desks. That's probably true for large numbers of people, but you need to accommodate people where that's an unreasonable expectation as well.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 6:03 AM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


It brings back bad memories of dot matrix printers and worn-out ribbons.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:49 AM on October 8, 2018


These must have been some bored-ass scientists.
posted by MiraK at 9:31 AM on October 8, 2018


It's supposed to be sans serif but they have serifs on the numeral 1?
And the difference between the letter O and the numeral 0 is a 90-degree rotation of the symbol ()?
Meh.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:42 AM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


boo
posted by chance at 1:59 PM on October 8, 2018


Don't like the font but like the name of the font.
posted by 4ster at 7:51 PM on October 8, 2018



Handwriting would have the same or similar effect then, given its random qualities, but subtle and stark... hm. Not very efficient, but makes me think about studying/note-taking by hand as one’s learning process - when information is provided visually, audibly and in printed text generally chosen for clarity.

I’m not buying this, but it is interesting to think about.

I have trouble with comprehension sometimes because I love how words and letters look (yeah, no... Comic Sans excluded. Always and forever. My divorce lawyer actually used CS - even her bills. Ugh. I should have taken it as an omen. Enough said).

I’ll lose track of content because I’m looking at the word and words as art, basically. I’m an artist but I doubt that’s why I do this or that this type of distraction is unique.

Font type, size and layout do matter for myriad reasons, including clarity/comprehension.

I think it was a Harvard study done years ago... I’ll try to find the link that indicated doodling may help with listening (classroom type setting for example). I drove my 5th grade History teacher nuts with it, I finally convinced him it helped listen and attend. I felt so guilty for decades until I found the article, thinking I was just trying to get away with drawing because I couldn’t NOT do it. Tons of us doodle while on the phone - well, back when we did that sort of thing.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of-doodling-2016121510844

Ugly font, this... if what I saw in the link is a sample. As another member said, poor vision and dirty glasses have an effect, too.

Interesting subject catalyst (thanks!), but for me that’s about all.


posted by misondre at 10:44 AM on October 20, 2018


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