Readability and legibility of fonts considering shakiness of head mounted displays

In wearable computing environments, users acquire visual information in various scenes using a head mounted display (HMD). However, this induces problems due to their differences from conventional displays such as smartphone and e-books. In this research, we focused on the problem of vertical shock caused by walking. This problem interferes with seeing information on HMDs. In this paper, we discuss selection of font shapes to minimize the effect of this problem. If we can clarify the characteristics of the readability of fonts in wearable computing environments, the application designers can select fonts that strike a balance between intended design elements and readability. In this paper, we first investigated the characteristics of fonts used in Japan considering the HMD swing that results from walking, from the viewpoints of readability (text readability) and legibility (ease of letter recognition) using six different fonts. From this evaluation, we find that fonts with very thin horizontal lines and with very thin horizontal and vertical lines should not be presented on HMDs.

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