The Application of Choice Set Principles to Typeface Selection
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THE APPLICATION OF CHOICE SET PRINCIPLES TO TYPEFACE SELECTION A Dissertation by Douglas E. Fox Master of Arts, Wichita State University, 2008 Bachelor of Arts, Wichita State University, 2006 Submitted to the Department of Psychology and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2011 © Copyright 2011 by Douglas Fox All Rights Reserved THE APPLICATION OF CHOICE SET PRINCIPLES TO TYPEFACE SELECTION The following faculty members have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a major in Psychology. ____________________________________________ Barbara S. Chaparro, Committee Chair ____________________________________________ Darwin Dorr, Committee Member ____________________________________________ Don Malzahn, Committee Member ____________________________________________ Ed Merkle, Committee Member ____________________________________________ Victoria Shaffer, Committee Member Accepted for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences _________________________________________________________ William D. Bischoff, Dean Accepted for the Graduate School _________________________________________________________ J. David McDonald, Dean iii DEDICATION To those that inspired and supported me on this journey, and to those that challenged me to become better iv The choices we make by accident are just as important as the choices we make by design. ~Dr. Shad Helmstetter v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Those that know me best, know that I am not one for expressing my feelings towards others. I don’t like writing sappy notes in cards, I don’t like posting cute comments on Facebook about how much I love my wife, and I most certainly do not like hugging. With that in mind, if you are one of the following that received an acknowledgement, cherish the significance of this moment since it does not occur often and realize that I have always appreciated your efforts in silence. I would like to start off by thanking my wife and parents. My wife, Ashley, has always been my anchor throughout life. Thank you for supporting me throughout the stressful times, and celebrating with me during the joyous times. While I’m afraid Graduate School consists of more stressful than joyous times, you always stuck by and lived every moment with me, providing me the love and support to achieve whatever goals I set. To my parents, after nine years of college I still do not think you understand what I do. I’m sure you think I am somehow responsible for creating the Google search engine, and have no clue what Human Factors or User Experience even means. Nevertheless, you still beam with pride and have provided me the much needed support in life and school. Thank you Dad for instilling in me the work ethic that has helped me achieve success beyond my wildest dreams. Thank you Mom for the hugs, kisses, and the simple “I love you” along the way. There have been some very important mentors throughout my career that have passed on their wisdom and knowledge that I would also like to thank. Most of all, I would like to thank Dr. Barbara Chaparro. I can still remember those nervous elevator rides going to your office as an undergrad. I knew if I could just get a chance that I would succeed in vi Graduate School. Thank you for giving me that chance, and providing me the tools in my tool belt to succeed. To Dr. Shaffer, thank you for caring enough to push your students and not letting them get away with the bare minimum. The passion you have for your work is infectious, and has greatly inspired my own—including this dissertation. Dr. Merkle, thank you for your willingness and patience for helping others that do not have your statistical knowledge. Don’t let the dazed and confused expressions fool you, many of your statistical lessons will stick with me throughout my career. Dr. Dorr, thank you for being on my dissertation committee. I greatly enjoyed your Personality courses. Your ability to relate real life experiences made the material easier to learn and more enjoyable. Dr. Malzahn, thank you for also being on the committee. Your outside perspective is very important to those of us that are so close to the topic. Last but not least, I would like to thank Dawn Shaikh. To this day, I’m still not sure what you saw in me as an undergrad. You took me under your wing, and exemplify what all graduate students should embody. There is no other person’s path that I would have rather followed. Finally, I would like to thank the peers and friends that helped me along the way. Whether it was study groups or paintball wars, the memories we created together will forever be cherished. Thank you Justin for being my partner in crime. We had great times together, both productive and not so productive. I will be saving you a seat at Google. Adam, from our days in 4‐2‐3 to our dissertations, who would have thought we would have made it this far. Thanks for the friendly competitions, laughs, and more information than I ever wanted to know about Texas Tech. Also, thank you Amanda for being a good friend throughout the years and preventing me from getting into even more mischief than I already did. You are genuinely one of the nicest people I know. vii If I forgot anybody, I’m sorry. The light is blinking and the academy is telling me to exit the stage. One last time, thank you to anybody that helped along this road. I hope our paths intersect again sooner than later. viii ABSTRACT Choice set size has implications on how people select typefaces, which are normally presented in long, alphabetical lists in programs such as Microsoft Word™. The extensive size of the choice set makes choosing a typeface a difficult task, which is unfortunate because typeface selections are highly important. Choosing the right typeface ensures that the rhetoric of the message is expressed correctly, and that confusions do not occur due to low legibility. Two ways of decreasing the choice difficulty is by reducing the number of typefaces and incorporating categories into the choice set. For these reasons, this experiment explored the effects that choice set design has on typeface selections in two studies. Study 1 examined the effect that size and categorization had on the affective response (satisfaction, difficulty, etc.) and preference for making a typeface decision. Participants reported higher satisfaction and preferred typeface choice sets that contained informative categories. Results also revealed that moderate size choice sets were associated with less difficulty, less choice overload, and higher satisfaction than large choice sets. Study 2 examined the effect that categorization had on the strategy for choosing a typeface across different document types. Participants spent more time choosing a typeface and contemplated more typefaces when using choice sets that contained categories, regardless of document type. This provides evidence that categorization lead participants to use a more optimal decision strategy, which should increase the likelihood of selecting a more optimal typeface. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Why Study Typeface Selection? ........................................................................................................... 1 2. CHOICE SET RESEARCH .......................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Effects of CoMplicated Choice Sets ..................................................................................................... 6 2.2 SuboptiMal Strategies .............................................................................................................................. 7 2.2.1 Satisficing ...................................................................................................................................... 8 2.2.2 Decision Avoidance ................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.3 Status Quo Bias ........................................................................................................................... 9 2.3 Benefits of Large Choice Sets ............................................................................................................. 11 2.4 Categorization .......................................................................................................................................... 13 3. TYPEFACE CHOICE SETS ..................................................................................................................... 16 3.1 IMplications of Current Design ......................................................................................................... 16 3.2 Possible Solutions ................................................................................................................................... 20 4. PURPOSE, RESEARCH QUESTIONS, AND HYPOTHESES ........................................................ 26 5. STUDY 1: SUBJECTIVE RATINGS FOR TYPEFACE CHOICES SETS ..................................... 28 5.1 Purpose ......................................................................................................................................................