Investigating Text Legibility in Mobile UI
Ashley Colley, Piiastiina Tikka, Jussi Huhtala, Jonna Häkkilä · 2013
For typical mobile devices, such as smartphones, a significant amount of the use involves reading text. Our paper contributes in providing methods and initial data to improve usability testing practices related to mobile UI text legibility. We compared two methods to study mobile UI text legibility -- perceived and measured results from a study of 17 users, and automated Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The results are compared with different foreground-background graphics and simulated lighting conditions causing reflections on the device screen, which are essential factors in the mobile use context and can influence the text legibility. The results demonstrate, for instance, a very strong correlation between subjective ratings and OCR results, in response to the different conditions.