Assessing the impact of typeface design in a text-rich automotive user interface

Abstract

Text-rich driver–vehicle interfaces are increasingly common in new vehicles, yet the effects of different typeface characteristics on task performance in this brief off-road based glance context remains sparsely examined. Subjects completed menu selection tasks while in a driving simulator. Menu text was set either in a ‘humanist’ or ‘square grotesque’ typeface. Among men, use of the humanist typeface resulted in a 10.6% reduction in total glance time as compared to the square grotesque typeface. Total response time and number of glances showed similar reductions. The impact of typeface was either more modest or not apparent for women. Error rates for both males and females were 3.1% lower for the humanist typeface. This research suggests that optimised typefaces may mitigate some interface demands. Future work will need to assess whether other typeface characteristics can be optimised to further reduce demand, improve legibility, increase usability and help meet new governmental distraction guidelines.

Practitioner Summary: Text-rich in-vehicle interfaces are increasingly common, but the effects of typeface on task performance remain sparsely studied. We show that among male drivers, menu selection tasks are completed with 10.6% less visual glance time when text is displayed in a ‘humanist’ typeface, as compared to a ‘square grotesque’.

Keywords::

• typography
• driving
• distraction
• display
• legibility

Notes

An earlier presentation of this work appears as a white paper (Reimer, Mehler, and Coughlin 2012).

Additional information

Funding

This collaborative project was underwritten in part by Monotype Imaging Inc. through funding provided to MIT and in contribution of technical support and typographical expertise. The authors would also like to acknowledge the US Department of Transportation's Region I New England University Transportation Center at MIT for additional support.