Perhaps because people learn better when it's a struggle to do so, content written in difficult-to-read fonts is more readily remembered than content rendered in visually pleasing fonts, a group of researchers has found.

Their seemingly counter-intuitive findings could interest computer user-interface specialists wishing to maximize the impact of their designs.

In both lab experiments and in classroom trials, the researchers found that people learn new written information more easily if that information is presented in a font that is comparatively difficult to read, rather than with a font that is easier on the eyes.

Their results fall in line with other educational research that shows that the more challenging it is for people to learn new material, the more thoroughly they will ultimately understand that material.

"More cognitive engagement leads to deeper processing, which facilitates encoding and subsequently better retrieval," the researchers , which was published in the January issue of the Cognition scientific journal.