The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the feasibility of using hand drawn images to identify symbol components for incorporation into warning symbol design software. This software will use an interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) algorithm to generate and evolve symbols mathematically described by a set of numerical parameters. Therefore, participants (N = 100) ages 19–43 (x = 23.2) were recruited to determine these symbol design parameters. Participants were invited to hand draw warning symbols for three referents: fall from elevation, hearing protection, and hazardous atmosphere. A panel of design engineers determined 27 attributes were present in the fall from elevation, 19 in the hearing protection, and 25 in the hazardous atmosphere images. A direct clustering algorithm was used to determine which attributes, or symbol parameters, were most commonly present or conspicuously absent among the clustered image families. For the fall from elevation, hearing protection and hazardous atmosphere referents, the clustering algorithm identified six, four and four symbol parameters, respectively, primarily responsible for distinguishing one drawn symbol from another. Thus, these parameters will be included as evolvable genes in the IEC software.

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The Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) has not been adopted by OSHA, but it has the potential to impact the format of every safety data sheet (SDS) used in commerce today. This preliminary investigation attempts to investigate the impact of the use of hazard and precautionary symbols on SDS. Participants were able to refer to a SDS, either with or without hazard and precautionary symbols depending on the trial, to assist them in completing an on-line questionnaire. The presence of the precautionary symbols was significant for one pair of SDS, but there were no significant differences found between questionnaire scores for SDS with hazard symbols and SDS with no symbols or the other pair of SDS with precautionary symbols. The participants correctly responded to an average of 72% of the material on the survey. Participants self-reported they referred to the SDS 66% of the time to respond to seven yes/no questions.

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