Strange that I have worked with so many designers over so many years that ignore basic research like this. In ecommerce it is a constant battle against block caps for every title, every product name and every banner. It is also a constant battle to get copy in a legible font with sensible line heights.<p>Recently I switched some fonts from the designer fonts to native font stacks with sensible line heights and the conversion rate improved considerably, although I was not able to measure this as there were external factors, e.g. sales promotions, that make this not so clear cut. The consensus is that the faster, easier to read site is winning sales, nobody cares with such emotion about the exact font now it is totally different on all devices, things have gone from being exactly specified to whatever it happens to be on the native font stack, there is almost no way of knowing if that really is 'San Francisco' or not. What I have not explained to my critical colleagues is how the 'SF' font changes from 'text' spacing and font to 'display' spacing and font above 19pt. So the font automagically adjusts itself for optimal legibility and clarity. I think the NASA typography guys would have approved of this approach when designing for displays - use the best fonts on the device. I also think Tim Berners Lee would approve, the original web was supposed to be with the device doing the look and feel.
For the new air traffic control centre in Swanwick here in the UK, I worked with a team doing UI design for the big 20x20 displays that the controllers (ATCOs) would use. Because these were effectively radar screen replacements, the ATCOs insisted that the screens should be black, with all the aircraft tracks, track blocks and other such on the screen in bright colours, as this is what they were used to. The UI experts said no, research indicates that it is better (more restful on the eyes etc) to use a light background, with the tracks in dark colours, and pastels for the track blocks. It was interesting to see how much research went into all this, much more that simple user preference.<p>The upshot however was that the ATCOs won, and the radar-style colour scheme was what was delivered.
There is also this one: Legible, are you sure? An experimentation-based typographical design in Safety-critical context <a href="http://lii-enac.fr/articles/vinot-chi-2012.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://lii-enac.fr/articles/vinot-chi-2012.pdf</a><p>Wired had an article a few years ago: <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/aircraft-typography" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.co.uk/article/aircraft-typography</a>
Related: the Typesets in the Future blog.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://typesetinthefuture.com/" rel="nofollow">https://typesetinthefuture.com/</a>
For what it's worth, the US military often references MIL-STD-1472 [1] to frame general design requirements for pretty much anything that involves direct human interaction.<p>[1] <a href="http://quicksearch.dla.mil/qsDocDetails.aspx?ident_number=36903" rel="nofollow">http://quicksearch.dla.mil/qsDocDetails.aspx?ident_number=36...</a>
There are a few other reports on the topic in the NASA archives. Such as this one which references the report linked to by this post.<p>Designing Flight Deck Procedures - 2005 - <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110016464&hterms=Typography&qs=N%3D0%26Ntk%3DAll%26Ntt%3DTypography%26Ntx%3Dmode%2520matchallpartial" rel="nofollow">https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110016464&hterms=Typogr...</a>
This should have (1992) added to the title. Still interesting. What tipped me off was this observation:<p><i>There are over 2300 typefaces available today.</i>
Note that this is from 1992. Even so, it's definitely fascinating to see the amount of attention to detail put into the design of the documentation.
As one (somewhat less serious) anecdote, remember the Best Movie mishap at the recent Academy Awards?<p>Better typography could almost certainly have prevented that:<p><a href="https://medium.freecodecamp.com/why-typography-matters-especially-at-the-oscars-f7b00e202f22" rel="nofollow">https://medium.freecodecamp.com/why-typography-matters-espec...</a>
The document is a bit equivocal on the use on serif vs sans-serif fonts but eventually states that sans-serifs are usually more legible. Interestingly, US pocket checklists (for use in flight) use a serif font for the routine checklists and sans-serif for the emergency procedures. I wonder if there was some research that supports that decision. ([1] is an F-14 checklist I found on the internet but other platforms' checklists have identical formatting.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/grumman/f-14tomcat/navair-01-f14aap-1b-natops-pocket-checklist-f-14b-aircraft.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/grumman/f-...</a>
I wonder why they don't insert a small vertical space before each line with a bullet point in front.<p>For me, this makes it much easier to identify the groups of lines that belong together.