You "read faster" with a longer line length but "prefer" shorter

You "read faster" with a longer line length but "prefer" shorter

Have you ever had to decide how wide a column of text you should use on a screen? Should you use a wide column with 100 characters per line? or a short column with 50 characters per line?
It turns out that the answer depends on whether you want people to read faster or whether you want them to like the page!

Research (see reference below) demonstrates that 100 characters per line is the optimal length for on-screen reading speed; but it’s not what people prefer. People read faster with longer line lengths (100 characters per line), but they prefer a short or medium line length (45 to 72 characters per line). In the example above from the New York Times Reader, the line length averages 39 characters per line.

The research also shows that people can read one single wide column faster than multiple columns, but they prefer multiple columns (like the New York Times Reader above).
So if you ask people which they prefer they will say multiple columns with short line lengths. Interestingly, if you ask them which they read faster, they will insist it is also the multiple columns with short line lengths, even though the data shows otherwise.

It’s a quandary: Do you give people what they prefer or go against their own preference and intuition, knowing that they will read faster if you use a longer line length and one column?

What would you do?

You Have “Inattention Blindness”

You Have “Inattention Blindness”

This is an example of what is called “inattention blindness” or “change blindness”. The idea is that people often miss large changes in their visual field. This has been shown in many experiments.

So what does this mean if you are designing a website or something on a computer screen? It means that you can’t assume that just because something is on the screen means that people see it. This is especially true when you refresh a screen and make one change on it. People may not realize they are even looking at a different screen. Remember, just because something happens in the visual field doesn’t mean that people are consciously aware of it.

Source HERE

Of capitalism and 'Money'

Of capitalism and 'Money'

(Excuse me for the long post)

The generation of our parents, this generation of the 40's and 50's is mostly a generation that experienced a hard time with capitalism and the effort to earn their living. And by that I do not mean that the rate of consumerism was high, yes, people needed to consume, but mostly we'll find that the means of luxury were very, very simple; a gum with less than one piaster, a small ball to play in the streets - if there was balls in the first place.

Money to them meant nothing more than something not very essential, so long as they are blessed with the gift of life and don't need more than their basic needs, which are already there..kind of. Life was simple. People were less of consumerists and more of human beings.
Those are the people who grew up to have the clash with our generation, that of the 80's and 90's. Technology played the essential role for consumerism, first personal computers and phones, then laptops, smartphones, iPods and iPads. Being technology freaks was the companies' aim to rise with consumerism and the abuse of simple minds. You accepted it, I accepted it, we all did, unwittingly and defeated. It has become essential to use technology to be able to keep one's pace with the world, and even with work, which is the main capitalistic world, you cannot have a job without "Computer skills", and anything of that sort.

Back to parents and us: what I want to say here (Don't mind that I usually go off track and forget my main points!) is that this non-consumerist generation-our parents-has become, to us, some sort of tight-fisted society, while to us consumerism means to keep yourself updated with the rest of the world.
We are the money wasters and they are the tight-fisted. And nothing comes in between to pacify or save this gap.

What Capitalism does here, other than enslavement, is that it indirectly or even directly broadens this gap between us, and inside the same generation of ours. We're not equal, basic life needs to us are not basic life needs to our parents or to the poor. The more money we got, the bigger these basics are, and the bigger the basics are, the less aware we are of the poor. That's what Capitalism wants. That's what the governments want. And that's how exactly it is going.

I'm currently reading-almost done though-"Utopia" for Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq, and despite the fact that this novel is way more disgusting that I thought, and way darker than I imagined (I really had struggles at the middle and even thought of not finishing it), the novel describes exactly the course of the present into the future. I can't say nor want to believe it will be really like that, but after all the rich are already building their own colonies, the poor is dying yet still want to believe one of this new generation will revolt and save the planet. And we all wait.

On a final note, I loudly admit I'm an iPhone user and I'm a consumerist like we all are. But the point is to not dwell and to spend some time in being humans rather than money-wasters.
Think about it.