> Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while such that reading it eventually becomes no different than reading whatever font you used to use before?

My favorite "desirable difficulty" from cog psych is to practice recall. I recall a study with 3 groups of students:

1. read essay 4 times

2. read and take notes, study notes

3. read once, then have to write out (a few times) what can be recalled on a blank piece of paper

The groups were from most to least confident in their learning but the actual success on a test for concepts (which requires recall) was opposite.

So, better than using a weird font to push encoding of memory is to plan for and then do recall practice. Like tell other people about what you learned or test yourself on it.

You get good at whatever you practice. If you reread something over and over, you don't get better at recalling the ideas, but you do get better at reading the thing. I bet the first group above would do better than the others at giving a live reading of the essay.

There was excitement when the first study showed hard-to-read fonts improved test performance in 2007[1]. Since then, there have been enough attempted replications for a 2015 review to conclude that there's no effect[2].

[1] Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning: http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2007-16657-003

[2] Disfluent fonts don’t help people solve math problems: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-13746-007

I tweeted about this yesterday, from the article:

> "Students remembered 57 per cent ... written in Sans Forgetica, compared to 50 per cent .... in Ariel"

7% delta retention isn't so much, is it?

I can't find it at the moment, but the last time I looked, attempted replications of an early "illegibility improves recall" study failed. (IIRC, that didn't use a custom font, but rather some de-contrasting/visual-noise applied.)

I see no cited papers here, just the claim, in the video, that "over 100 students" were used in testing to pick this font from several candidates.

I'm doubtful of any long-term value here. Even if "desirable difficulty" mechanism is real, I'd expect different readers to need wildly different levels of interference, and for their perceptions to adapt quickly to consistent letterforms. (So, to really get the benefit, you'd have an adjustable and dynamic level of perceptual-interference.)

Wow, they have their own TLD! https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/rmit.html

Interesting that the university's website is not on that TLD but rather https://rmit.edu.au

While some folks here are joking about mirroring text, there's a sane point behind that.

There's an ancient Greeks' way to read text more effectively called Boustrophedon. The idea is that the text lines are interleaved with x-axis mirrored lines, so your eyes move not by Z-shape trajectory, but like meander. There're demo texts to learn to use it [1].

As for my experience, I can't say I'd been understanding or remembering more or less while reading boustro, especially when I'd begun to get used to it.

[1] https://boustro.com/app/

This is actively being discussed in the memory and mnemonics community along side spaced repetition.

I'd like to see more research here and see where it can be used and how it can be used.

I've been working on an integrated offline browser for documents and annotation named Polar:

https://getpolarized.io/

which is mostly designed around annotation and spaced repetition.

You can store all your documents and web content in one place and since you're obviously trying to read and retain all that information it might be interesting to enable this as a one-off feature to see if it helps.

Another idea could be to just have them for the flashcards since this is the key information you're trying to retain.

That font seems quite legible actually. The letters are all quite distinct and apart from the gaps and backward-slant, follow proper typographical conventions.

I would have made the letters monospaced at least (no kerning either), and would have used base letter shapes that look much more alike (e.g., the bowls of the d, a, q, and c should be the same, because slight differences in them help you identify letters more readily, which is precisely what proper fonts do).

Also, does that university actually own their own top-level domain? Those don't come cheap do they?

I thought it was something to do with forging essays or something similar as I kept reading it as Forge-tica.

I always thought the use of study notes was just in writing them to stimulate memory, not actually reading them (for me at least).

> Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing

Based on this logic - harder the process better the processing - its obviously a mistake that schools are increasingly using technology to teach, like visualizing geometric shapes on screen in 3D instead of painstakingly drawing on the board and letting students see it in their heads.

The basic idea has to do with a concept called processing fluency. Studies have shown that the harder your brain has to work to process the information, the more likely you are to absorb it -- at least to a point.

One recent study that manipulated processing fluency using a hard-to-read font is "Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion," Social Cognition, 2008.

The study found that people who read information in a hard-to-read font were better at spotting a certain category of error than people who read the same information in an easy-to-read font.

(Incidentally, this study is one that I adapted for my book "Experiments for Newlyweds: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform With Your Spouse," due out in April. So if you know any couples who'd like to try it out together, it makes a great wedding gift!)

Anyone know what the licence is for the font? It is free to download, but doesn't come with anything explaining usage and distribution restrictions.

In my experience, a good strategy is to read your notes aloud, preferably while walking.

This forces you to really notice what is written, helps sustain your attention (when you're walking and talking, there's not much cognitive slack for drifting off), will improve your memory (we tend to remember things better when we have spent a larger effort on them), and leads pretty naturally to reason aloud about what you have just read.

Apparently, there used to be perambulatory monks that would follow a similar strategy, reading or reciting sacred texts while pacing around the courtyards of their monastery.

Hm made an Ad with this font and your future customers will remember. Have to hurry up to create a brand ;D

Reminds me of Steve Yegge:

https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...

Fortunately I’d spent years watching Jeff in action before my turn came, and I had prepared in an unusual way. My presentation -- which, roughly speaking was about the core skills a generalist engineer ought to know -- was a resounding success. He loved it. Afterwards everyone was patting me on the back and congratulating me like I’d just completed a game-winning hail-mary pass or something. One VP told me privately: “Presentations with Jeff never go that well.”

:

To prepare a presentation for Jeff, first make damn sure you know everything there is to know about the subject. Then write a prose narrative explaining the problem and solution(s). Write it exactly the way you would write it for a leading professor or industry expert on the subject.

That is: assume he already knows everything about it. Assume he knows more than you do about it. Even if you have ground-breakingly original ideas in your material, just pretend it’s old hat for him. Write your prose in the succinct, direct, no-explanations way that you would write for a world-leading expert on the material.

You’re almost done. The last step before you’re ready to present to him is this: Delete every third paragraph.

Right when I saw the example text, I was immediately reminded of typographical rivers[0]. If you have a visual memory, I'm guessing rivers in paragraphs may also help you remember what you read, since the negative space creates branch-like structures in the paragraph, which adds an extra visual memory cue. After looking at a few examples of this font, it's clear that this font was designed to do that. You can see similar continuous structures in the text itself. Pretty neat. Looks like they also borrowed ideas from Daniel Kahneman, as well[1]. In his book, I believe one of the examples does a test on Princeton students to see how many riddles they can solve, and they did better when the font was harder to read.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Regardless if it works, its a pretty neat font. I didnt see a license though, does anyone know what is allowed?

I would LOVE a monospaced version of this. If any type designers are out there, please make this happen.

I'm inclined to think someone behind this was having a lot of fun, and it looks nice.

If it turns out not to be a joke/hoax/psychology/social experiment, I will be sure to remember - I made a note to check back later, using this special font that aids memory.

It's free. It's easy to install. There's no hidden catch like giving up your privacy. Skepticism aside, I don't see the harm in trying it.

What would be cool is if they conducted a larger study via the Chrome plugin.

It looks like a pretty artistic stencil font, which is to say I don't believe it's all that much harder to read nor helps memory --- certainly I've seen a lot of text in stencil font in various places, but I don't really remember what that text was now.

Looking at paragraphs of text in it, I feel like it actually encourages me to read faster because of the missing pieces; maybe it is harder to read but that triggers "skim mode" so I pay less attention to each word.

I tried and feel this font is crazy. I can hardly focus on the content because my brain struggles in recognizing the letters. It does exactly the opposite goal as it claims.

I can't actually see the font. The page has the font samples at #ccccdd with a white background.

If someone doesn't seem to understand something as simple as contrast, why should I think they understand memory?

Webaim has a tool to help with contrasts. Anything lighter than #595959 on a white background can be hard to see.

https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

I like Sans Forgetica. The idea that difficult reading and writing can help you remember something is very fresh and real to me because 𐑲 𐑿𐑟 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑓𐑹 𐑨𐑤 𐑥𐑲 𐑯𐑴𐑑𐑟 𐑯 𐑑𐑨𐑕𐑒 𐑤𐑦𐑕𐑑𐑟 𐑑 𐑣𐑧𐑤𐑐 𐑥𐑰 𐑒𐑺𐑮𐑓𐑳𐑤𐑰 𐑕𐑧𐑤𐑧𐑒𐑑 𐑢𐑳𐑑 𐑑 𐑢𐑮𐑲𐑑 𐑯 𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑧𐑥𐑚𐑳𐑮.

In both cases, I notice it's easier to memorize things in this fashion. Although I suppose with the ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 that effect will wear off if I obtain more reading & writing proficiency.

This is like the opposite of a dyslexia friendly font.

Maybe we should treat the root cause and not the symptom? If people don't remember stuff because they don't need it then maybe the tests should not depend on remembering useless stuff?

At my job for some reason I never need to force myself to remember stuff; it comes naturally as I look up the same thing over and over again because I use it frequently.

It's having the opposite effect on me. I usually remember images outright(including the shape the letters took, word positions, some smudged portion of the page, other defects, etc.) and read it out mentally in real-time as I need it. This font is completely messing with my mnemonic. I have trouble visualizing anything I write in it.

If they are so confident on the efficacy of their font, why don't they use the font for all the text on their website?

Compared to Donald Knuth's font [1], Sans Forgetica is for wussies.

[1] Donald E. Knuth, N-Ciphered Texts: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

It would've been nice to have the whole page to be in the Sans Forgetica font to see it in action.

I tried copy-pasting the whole website into the "Type something you want to remember" box near the bottom. Unfortunately, it's a <div contenteditable> and the original font styling got copied inside too. :|

Man, my learning process had very little to do with reading the notes that I wrote down. I can maybe remember one or two tests where I actually read over my notes, but most of the time it was just the original writing down that seemed to help with learning.

Maybe if the textbook was printed in this font...

So you'll learn it after a while and it won't serve it's purpose anymore? Each letter should slightly animate like a little slug or render randomly to get benefits of forcing brain to read-with-focus or whatever that is.

Ahem, my knowledge of cognitive psychology (and psychology in general) are certainly not relevant but I pretend to be a decent reader... Sorry, your font is terrible to read. I spent more time in deciphering it than in understand the written concept.

BTW personally I always found FAR MORE effective to take notes with pen and paper and after transfer them on personal desktop, in org_mode in my case so without any fancy distracting typography. The same for reading: I learn far more reading a printed docs than from an on-screen one. I test many times and techniques from high school to university to work training/conference etc. ALL "PC made from the start" was a fail, including photos and voice recording. Of course I'm not a statistical valid sample but I pretend to be not much different than any other human around.

Surely you would get used to it and then it would stop being difficult to read.

If “more difficult to read” indeed implies “better retention”, we need a browser extension that shows a captcha on every page load that uses text phrases supplied by the user.

I fear that’s a fairly fat if, though.

I realize this is a corner case, but I wonder how dyslexics will perform using a font that looks even less like a letterform — when it is already a struggle to combine several into a word.

I think this approach is doomed to fail because Learning is already hard. Increasing the cognitive load at the very beginning of the learning process seems like a non-starter to me.

WRITING BY HAND. A font to help you remember your study notes.

The mediating factor for these studies is going to be reading time. Similarly I would presume reading a mathematics text out of order will also boost recall on a test.

I don't really believe in it before experimenting, but I'll give it a try with Anki spaced repetion software. Maybe I'll improve remembering.

Apparently I can memorize much better images than words, so I found helps me a lot replacing words or parts of words with icons. That’s my study “font”.

How do I use this in Anki? Could be a really great help!

Contender for a considerably better dyslexia font.

It takes on the order of a few minutes for your brain to learn to read that font fluently. It all seems rather silly.

Does RMIT have a good reputation?

Does someone have this as a LaTeX font package?

I tried and feel this is crazy. I cannot focus on the content because my brain struggles in recognizing the letters.

If being hard to read makes something easier to remember, my Japanese would be a lot better by now.

Is anyone familiar with OpenDyslexic? It does the same job but for normal people, I think.

Tried the chrome extension - doesn't seem to be working. Can you guys look into this?

Comic Sans was ahead of its time

It's cool, but has this been tested under replicable scientific conditions?

It reminds me of the lettering on the signs in Lucis in Final Fantasy XV.

Is Cyrillic support planned?

engineered information loss to streghten your cranial muscle, fun

Not to be the usual skeptic, but "scientifically designed" doesn't really-really mean (at least to me) "designed by scientists" (which this thingy is).

I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read?

The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it:

>The science of Sans Forgetica

>Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

I would like to have something more than a video by the scientists that designed it.

If it wasn't a UNI backed thing, I would have thought that the video was a sales pitch for Kickstarter or similar.

I had some expectations for the .pdf inside the downloadable .zip but basically all there is in it is:

>Learn more about the science behind Sans Forgetica at sansforgetica.rmit

This is cool. Shame most of my study notes are equation-heavy.

Australian news articles about it (may be behind paywall / geo block):

https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/sans-forgetica-rmi...

https://www.theage.com.au/education/the-new-font-that-promis...

https://mumbrella.com.au/naked-creates-font-for-rmit-which-i...

I don't get it.

Does it include a full set of unforgettable emojis?

I'd like to see a Chinese version of this...

Uh. I have a feeling I'll just not read it properly and learn worse, if anything.

thats a nightmare if you are dyslexic/practic/etc

Recalling the recent "how to smell BS papers" article, this doesn't pass the grandma test.

More specifically, you would imagine that if such a simple hack existed, we would be well aware of it in 500 years of printed press.

The example text just gives me eyestrain. If I wanted eyestrain, I'd just borrow someone else's glasses, or switch to a low res monitor.