Larger Chinese text spacing and size: effects on older users’ experience

Abstract

With declining vision ability, character spacing and size on smartphones designed for the general population are not accessible for older adults. This study aimed to explore how larger Chinese character spacing and size affect older adults’ user experience (UX). An orthogonal experiment was conducted. The optimal range of font size (FS), word spacing (WS) and line spacing (LS) were proposed utilising subjective evaluations to investigate the correlation of eye movement data with participants perceived UX. The results showed that improvement in different aspects of UX varied when FS, WS and LS increased. Overall, participants preferred larger FS, WS and LS, however, the larger FS, WS and LS values are more likely to cause errors and slower reading speed. These results suggest that the distinct combination of size and spacing depends on the motivation, needs and situation of older people when reading on a smartphone. These findings will help designers to provide better design for the older people.

How to design font size for older adults: A systematic literature review with a mobile device

“…The lighting in the experiment environment is an essential factor that affects productivity. Some studies simulated environmental lighting in their experiment to observe the effect on reading time/speed, readability and legibility of font sizes (Yeh, 2020 ) performed their experiment in a classroom to minimize outside inference, sunlight was adequate, and minimal noise and a controlled temperature of 26 degrees C. Another study by Hou et al ( 2020 ) simulated ambient lighting using 40-Watt LED lights during the experiment. Although the direct effect of the environmental factors was not explored, we can conclude that the experiment's environment influences the size recommendations in these studies.…”

“…It was observed that increasing both the Chinese inter-character spacing and inter-line spacing significantly improved reading performance for older adults. In a study by Hou et al ( 2020 ) investigating the effect of Chinese text spacing and size on older user experience, the effects on usability, visual comfort, cognitive load and reading performance were explored. An eye tracker was used to obtain eye movement data which was then analyzed.…”

“…It was observed that usability improved with an increase in font size. Older adults (59–79 years) preferred larger font size of (10.5–15pt) and spacing (0.5–1.0pt) in terms of readability, usability, visual comfort and reading performance on an iPhone 6s and found larger sizes than mentioned unsatisfactory (Hou et al, 2020 ). These sizes were optimal for standard reading scenarios, visual search or skimming through a webpage with articles or paragraphs.…”

“…This study directly argued with the study results (Epelboim et al, 1994 ) as primarily based on one subject. Epelboim et al ( 1994 ) also stated the need for clear vision, which is not the case for some older adults as age-related changes in vision significantly affect the ability to read and understand un-spaced texts efficiently, thus, inducing cognitive load leading to unwillingness on the part of the individual (Hou et al, 2020 ). His study observed that usability decreased as the word spacing increased but improved as the line spacing increased.…”

A Book Interaction Scheme to Enhance Children’s Reading Experiences and Preferences

“…Compared with digital reading, traditional books help protect eyesight and are less dependent on computers ( Jeong, 2012 ; Hou et al, 2020 ). More people have in recent years become addicted to digital reading, whether adolescents ( Lee et al, 2014 ) or adults ( Elhai et al, 2016 ).…”