Expressive Theme: research

Table of contents

• Introduction
• IBM Customers
  • Z system persona
  • Main user journey personas
    • 1. Biz leaders
    • 2. Tech leaders
    • 3. Developers
    • 4. Business analyst
  • General workforce within the industry
• Accessibility is not just about color contrast and color blindness. It's also about age, vision, cognitive abilities.
• Base type size
  • General web resources
    • Desktop, 104PPI at 23 inches
    • Laptop, 121PPI at 14 inches
    • Phone, 167PPI at 14 inches
• Component size
  • Studies
• Questions

Introduction

This document is to understand and establish requirements for base type size based on our users to inform the type theming design and development.

IBM Customers

Z system persona

Z systems main customers are system admins, which require years of experience. According to a survey, they start feeling comfortable in their roles after 10 years.

Role	Age
Sr. systems programmer/admin	50+
Mid-level systems programmer	35+
Entry-level programmer	22+

Main user journey personas

The Journey System team identified the following four main user persona groups, and their age distribution is as follows.

1. Biz leaders

Role	Avg age	Ref
CFO	50.7	ref
CMO	52	ref

2. Tech leaders

Role	Avg age	Ref
CTO	44	ref
CIO	49.5	ref

3. Developers

Age	Percentage	Ref
20-39	17.7%	ref
40+	17.4%	ref

4. Business analyst

Role	Avg age	Ref
Business analyst	41.3 years	ref

General workforce within the industry

Age group	Percentage
16-20	5%
21-36	35%
37-52	33%
53-71	25%
72+	2%

Ref

Accessibility is not just about color contrast and color blindness. It's also about age, vision, cognitive abilities.

Dyslexia

• Need to maintain minimum 16px

Health.gov

• Choose minimum 16px

design-system.service.gov.uk

• The default paragraph font size is 19px on large screens and 16px on small screens.

Designing for ADHD

• In terms of size, 12-point (= 16px) is often suggested for use on a screen

Base type size

General web resources

The Responsive Website Font Size Guidelines

• When the user taps on input field with label smaller than 14px, it zooms in.

16 Pixels Font Size: For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

• At age 40, only half the light gets through to the retina as it did at age 20. For 60-year-olds, it’s just 20%.
• Nearly 9% of Americans are visually impaired, meaning their vision cannot be completely corrected with lenses.

WCAG AA

• generally agreed upon size is 16px

Designing for seniors

the best font size for the web

Desktop, 104PPI at 23 inches

	Times		Arial
Min	14pt	19px	12pt	16px 🔹
Reco	18pt	24px	15pt	21px

Laptop, 121PPI at 14 inches

	Times		Arial
Min	10pt	14px	9pt	12px
Reco	13pt	17px	11pt	15px

Phone, 167PPI at 14 inches

	Times		Arial
Min	14pt	19px	12pt	16px 🔹
Reco	18pt	24px	15pt	21px

Component size

• Are we okay with mixing 16px body and 14px components?

Studies

• Body + component pairing
• URX
• Checkout
• Search

Questions

• is it more of the website issue?
• general type size theming

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