What’s in a name? The role of graphics, functions, and their interrelationships in icon identification

Abstract

Communication using icons is now commonplace. It is therefore important to understand the processes involved in icon comprehension and the stimulus cues that individuals utilize to facilitate identification. In this study, we examined predictors of icon identification as participants gained experience with icons over a series of learning trials. A dynamic pattern of findings emerged in which the primary predictors of identification changed as learning progressed. In early learning trials, semantic distance (the closeness of the relationship between icon and function) was the best predictor of performance, accounting for up to 55% of the variance observed, whereas familiarity with the function was more important in later trials. Other stimulus characteristics, such as our familiarity with the graphic in the icon and its concreteness, were also found to be important for icon design. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, with particular emphasis on the parallels with picture naming. The icon identification norms from this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.

What makes icons appealing? The role of processing fluency in predicting icon appeal in different task contexts

“…Performance in both tasks was as predicted on the basis of previous findings (BenBassat & Shinar, 2006;Byrne, 1993, Chan & Ng, 2010Isherwood & McDougall, 2009;Lesch et al, 2011;McDougall et al, 2000;Shinar et al, 2010). Appeal ratings mirrored performance suggesting that participants were using a processing fluency heuristic when making appeal evaluations (see Figures 4-6).…”

“…This suggests that searching for icons in arrays may have a topdown, as well as a bottom-up, processing component and aligns with later theoretical approaches to search which have emphasised the importance of prior knowledge of shapes, objects, or complex scenes (Bundesen, 1998;Green & Oliva, 2009;Joubert et al, 2007;Logan, 1996;Malcolm & Henderson, 2009;Rousselet et al, 2004;. Despite this correlation, both icon familiarity and complexity independently predict performance when participants are asked to find icons in an array (Isherwood & McDougall, 2007;McDougall & Isherwood, 2009). Thus, visual complexity appears to be important in determining search time for icons on interfaces and is related to familiarity because search is driven, in part at least, by our prior knowledge of stimuli.…”

“…While research suggests that concreteness is the most important determinant of performance, other work has shown that the effects of concreteness on user performance are less than previously thought (Isherwood & McDougall, 2007;McDougall & Isherwood, 2009). This appears to be because only a limited number of functions can be represented concretely -getting a close fit between pictures and functions is not always easy.…”

“…When compared to other icon characteristics, it appears to be the most important determinant of ease of identification (Isherwood & McDougall, 2007;McDougall & Isherwood, 2009). For example, our familiarity with the abstract icon representing 'female' in Figure 2d allows us to identify it more quickly and effectively compared with the pictorial rabbit icon representing 'fast processing' (Figure 2b).…”

Lisbon Symbol Database (LSD): Subjective norms for 600 symbols

“…For example, the "dollar" symbol (embedded in the background of a web page) activates a specific product attribute (i.e., price), increasing its weight in a subsequent decision-making task (Mandel & Johnson, 2002). Other possible uses include the examination of the effects of visual context on memory (Palma, Garrido, & Semin, 2014), of the processes involved in icon comprehension (e.g., McDougall & Isherwood, 2009), theories of attention and visual search tasks (e.g., McDougall, Tyrer, & Folkard, 2006), the refinement of visual process models (e.g., Figl, Mendling, & Strembeck, 2013), and neuroimaging studies examining how icons are processed in the brain (e.g., Huang, Bias, & Schnyer, 2015). Furthermore, this database is also likely to be useful in more applied domains, namely the effective communication of traffic sign messages to road users (e.g., Oh, Rogoff, & Smith-Jackson, 2013), the comprehension and use of pharmaceutical pictograms (e.g., Montagne, 2013), warning symbol comprehension (e.g., Lesch, Powell, Horrey, & Wogalter, 2013), cross-cultural comparisons of the use of symbols to convey warnings and instructions (e.g., Blees & Mak, 2012;Chan & Ng, 2012), and the design of icons that are suitable to specific populations, such as the elderly (e.g., Leung, McGrenere, & Graf, 2011) or preschoolers (Chiu, Koong, & Fan, 2012).…”