random memes }

No small fonts, please

A few years back I needed new glasses (due to wear and tear) and went to get my eyes checked. The end result was no change to the prescription, but went away with words from the examiner "your eyes should get worse from here on out". Apparently the human eye gets less flexible with age and past the age of 45 most folks have increasing trouble focusing on close-up objects.

Unfortunately the guy was right. I have noticed a marked change in exactly that ability to focus on small/near objects. What this means is that cell phones with tiny displays, and web sites with sub-sized fonts are - almost literally - a pain to use.

Went searching for web pages on user interface standards, and came up with the pages using undersized fonts. A sampling... UPA Conf 2003 - Curricula Anita Wilhelm - User Interface Designer - Portfolio

Since the lesson about websites and not using small fonts is relatively old, this is something you might reasonably expect folks professing expertise not to get wrong. Guess the lesson here is that when getting ideas from a "user interface" designer, do not assume that all their ideas are good.