12 - Future research and development
This document is a blueprint for further research. There’s a huge amount of future research needed to test and prove the Osprey concepts, and to implement the functionality, to keep a whole team of researchers – including external research groups – busy for the rest of our lives. Here are some of the projects that we need to do. Some have already begun. This section will continue to grow.
12.1 - ClearType
- Develop metrics to measure legibility, speed of reading and comprehension of existing screen font technology v. ClearType v. Printed documents.
- Use those measures to further improve ClearType.
- Investigate optimization of ClearType on different devices, e.g. RGB/BGR and other configurations, gamma, etc..
- Develop a monitor profiling system and automated optimization tools.
- Investigate optimization of ClearType fonts. Develop and document optimization criteria, and develop tools.
12.2 - Readability
- Implement the OSPREY reading engine in eBooks
- Develop metrics and methodologies to test reading speeds, comprehension and immersive reading.
- Test OSPREY v. existing screen reading v. Print.
- Use test results and metrics to enhance OSPREY implementations and continually monitor progress,
- Investigate how to implement OSPREY in broader areas of reading: e.g. Office documents, Web browsing, etc..
- Work with internal Microsoft teams to deploy OSPREY technology.
- Establish a world-class Microsoft Readability Advisory Council and recruit eminent experts from relevant fields and internal Microsoft members to serve on it and meet regularly. Use this as a thinktank to develop further lines of research, and to gather feedback.
- Evangelize OSPREY technology to the world outside Microsoft and establish contacts with relevant research groups, centers of excellence, etc..
- Investigate and implement Expert System/ AI solutions to give true document portability (i.e. documents that optimize, according to OSPREY readability principles, for the device on which they are viewed).