Have you ever found it difficult to stay focused when reading online? Maybe the font style or line spacing of a paragraph makes everything blur together.
Well, you're in luck. With FocusEx, it's possible to customize your reading experience to be more comfortable.
Make Any Website Easier to Read
FocusEx is an upcoming browser extension that allows you to transform entire paragraphs into Focus Sans, a custom typeface that was specifically designed for "the best readability." Once finished, it will be available for both desktop and mobile.
Focus Sans has generous proportions compared to most other fonts, and you can use the Focus Ex extension to adjust its other parameters. The spacing in-between the lines and letters, as well as the weight, width, and focus of individual letters can all be adjusted to your liking.
But FocusEx's main feature is an interactive mode called Focus Mode. When it is enabled, you can hover over individual words to make them bigger, just as if you were looking at them with a magnifying glass.
Both the extension and font are a thesis project by designer Vatány Szabolcs. He is a student at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest, Hungary.
A Font That Adapts to Your Preferences
While most regular fonts have a set number of styles for emphasis, such as bold or italic, Focus Sans is a variable font. This means that its features can instead be modified on a sliding scale, creating many possible variations.
Having a bunch of options for personalization, according to Szabolcs, can be very important to people with ADHD. The reason why is because it can be a struggle to properly focus and process written information.
Want to create a font of your own? Consider checking out this tool to turn your own handwriting into a font.
Szabolcs sent out a questionnaire to fluent readers with ADHD to collect data on their reading habits and potential needs. He also consulted psychology and neurology researchers from Budapest.
"One of my conclusions [that I came to while researching] was that different people just have different needs, even in reading," Szabolcs tells Dezeen.
It's encouraging to see a project that really embodies what design is should be: something that is both aesthetically pleasing and has real functionality. What's makes it better is that FocusEx gives you all the control.
The FocusEx Prototype Looks Promising
Neither the FocusEx font nor extension is available for download just yet, as the project is still in its conceptualization stage. Szabolcs writes that he'll begin development once he collects enough funds to do so.
Until then, you can test some of its features on the FocusEx website.
