What's your type?
Open-source fonts are ubiquitous on the Web, and yet we understand very little about the implicit connotations and underlying perceptions that users have of them. Nor do we understand how these preferences vary across cultures and languages.
What’s Your Type seeks to understand these font connotations and perceptions through a web-based survey. The survey asks users to
pick the font that best matches an emotive adjective—including “playful,” “informative,” and “trendy.” By gathering user responses, What’s Your Type crowdsources a database of font preferences, searchable by language and nationality of the respondent.
An animation I made to promote What's Your Type and communicate the survey's purpose: understanding the implicit connotations of open-source web fonts.
Before beginning, a brief popup explains the structure and purpose of the survey. We found that written instructions as well as a short animation helped prevent confusion once users began the survey.
An example of a survey question. Users are asked to pick the font that best matches an emotive adjective like "quirky." Background gradients for each keyword help users easily distinguish the questions from one another.
We made the site responsive for mobile usage, changing the card layout to ensure legibility of the typeface options and moving the survey progress to stretch across the bottom of the screen.
After completing the survey, users can see how they're choices compared with other respondents. Did they associate typefaces with the same adjectives as other users? Users can filter results by the nationality and language of the respondent to get a sense of how typeface preferences vary.