Feminist Map Icons, New Cartographic Vocabularies

Picking the best icons for a graphical user interface is difficult. We present a new method which, given several icon candidates representing functionality, selects a complete icon set optimized for comprehensibility and identifiability. These two properties are measured using human computation. We apply our method to a domain with a less established iconography and produce several icon sets. To evaluate our method, we conduct a user study comparing these icon sets and a designer-picked set. Our estimated comprehensibility score correlate with the percentage of correctly understood icons, and our method produces an icon set with a higher comprehensibility score than the set picked by an involved icon designer. The estimated identifiability score and related tests did not yield significant findings. Our method is easy to integrate in traditional icon design workflow and is intended for use by both icon designers, and clients of icon designers.

Working in projects is an important part of many jobs in service industry. Due to their knowledge and experience project planning is often accomplished by older employees. Therefore, and with regard to the demographic change an integration of the needs of older employees into the work environment is required. Common to most IT-based systems, including project management software, is the use of icons. To investigate different icon sets in project management software, regarding age related differences, two studies were conducted. The first study aimed at investigating two different icon sets regarding execution times and eye movements in an applied setting. The second study consisted of a questionnaire where subjects had to map different icons to their corresponding functions and had to compare these icons regarding their intuitiveness. Results revealed that older users profit from an icon design which is low in complexity but no impact by different icon designs was found for younger users.

Anachronism by Design: Understanding Young Adults’ Perceptions of Computer Iconography

Effects of training and representational characteristics in icon design

Global markets require global solutions, especially in user interface design. There are differences between cultures - but do those differences call for different icon designs? This paper provides a snapshot on icon comprehensibility in China, the US and Germany. The icon set was derived of an actual product to enable valid results. A web-based study with 135 participants from China, the US and Germany was conducted. Icon recognition rates among the Chinese participants were significantly lower than among US and German participants. Still, the mean rating for all three countries was above 69% and thus far removed from guesswork. Practical implications for global icon design are discussed based on these findings.

Effects of icon design on human-computer interaction

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), including large language models, diffusion-based image generation models and GenAI agents, has opened up new possibilities for advancing cartography, spanning both mapmaking and map use. With its exceptional ability to encode extensive knowledge, adapt across contexts, create diverse artistic styles and integrate multimodal information, GenAI holds great potential to enhance cartographic design decisions. It enables efficient, personalized, and creative mapmaking (e.g., conceptualization, data preparation, map design, and map evaluation), and map use (e.g., map reading, interpretation, and analysis). In this paper, we explore why and how GenAI can contribute to cartography through four case studies, including stylesheet design, icon design, map reading, and map evaluation. Despite its unprecedented potential, we also identify its current limitations, particularly in tasks that require high precision, reliability, and a deep understanding of cartographic principles. Moreover, we emphasize the need to consider ethical and social implications, such as issues related to confabulation and hallucination, reproducibility, biases, copyrights, explainability, and sustainability. Overall, this work lays the foundation and provides a roadmap for future studies at the promising yet challenging intersection of GenAI and cartography.

Research on visual size and visual alignment optimization of icon set design

This paper reports an experiment into the design of crossmodal icons which can provide an alternative form of output for mobile devices using audio and tactile modalities to communicate information. A complete set of crossmodal icons was created by encoding three dimensions of information in three crossmodal auditory/tactile parameters. Earcons were used for the audio and Tactons for the tactile crossmodal icons. The experiment investigated absolute identification of audio and tactile crossmodal icons when a user is trained in one modality and tested in the other (and given no training in the other modality) to see if knowledge could be transferred between modalities. We also compared performance when users were static and mobile to see any effects that mobility might have on recognition of the cues. The results showed that if participants were trained in sound with Earcons and then tested with the same messages presented via Tactons they could recognize 85% of messages when stationary and 76% when mobile. When trained with Tactons and tested with Earcons participants could accurately recognize 76.5% of messages when stationary and 71% of messages when mobile. These results suggest that participants can recognize and understand a message in a different modality very effectively. These results will aid designers of mobile displays in creating effective crossmodal cues which require minimal training for users and can provide alternative presentation modalities through which information may be presented if the context requires.

Challenging the acceptance of what have been defined as universal and standard pictograms, this paper promotes a conceptual approach to improve non-textual communication in digital mobility and delivery services, to ensure that different types of people may access content in an intuitive manner, overcoming language, cultural, physical and cognitive barriers. Starting from the user-centred methodological process applied in the development of the Universal Interface Language tool, one of the main outcomes of the INDIMO EU project (Inclusive Digital Mobility Solutions), this paper presents a methodological path that can provide UX/UI designers, developers and service providers with a practical guide to defining a proper set of accessible and inclusive icons as part of the user interface, be it digital or physical. In particular, this paper points out the need for bottom-up initiatives based on the co-design of physical and digital interfaces and their components to create symbols and icons with a higher degree of universality. To this end, user evaluations of mobility specific and general icons, and recommendations based on the empirical research in the INDIMO project, are presented. These address the design, selection and integration of visual icons in accessible user interfaces for digital applications.

The cartographic products of swisstopo have undergone numerous technological changes in their history and have constantly adapted to user needs. With the advent of the internet, the emergence of web maps and the mobile use of geodata on smartphones, maps are becoming increasingly widespread and used as information carriers in a variety of ways. However, expectations regarding the dissemination of information with digital maps have also changed fundamentally. With this in mind, swisstopo has launched the "Next Generation Map" project to provide maps specifically designed for mobile use in addition to the existing national maps in digital and printed form. One of the results of the project is a new base map. The "Base Map" is a web-based dynamic map visualisation using vector tiles and supplements swisstopo's existing offering with a mobile map. It is similar in complexity to the classic national map, but the map design has been optimised for smaller map extents in order to meet the requirements of smartphones, including the small display size. Some of the principles of the classic map design have been deliberately omitted to improve performance and readability. While the classic national map is designed for different scales, the "Base Map" follows a consistent design logic with smooth transitions in the sense of dynamic zooming. Cartographic generalisation is carried out fully automatically in the derivation process of the "Base Map" depending on the capabilities of the technology used. The terrain typical of the Swiss national map, including shading, rock and scree depiction, is converted into a completely vector-based representation in order to increase performance and minimise storage space for offline use. The high visualisation quality is nevertheless retained. The entire "Base Map" thus requires less than 3 GB of storage space for Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Base Map" as part of the "swissMapWeb" product line is available free of charge in the sense of Open Government Data. Swisstopo provides an interface (API-REST Services) that can be used to integrate the web maps into applications (https://www.geo.admin.ch/en/vector-tiles-service-available-services-and-data). Mobile map applications are particularly beneficial when used in real time, at the moment when relevant information is needed for orientation, wayfinding or searching. The availability and accessibility of useful information at the time of use are crucial for user acceptance. The need for real-time information is particularly high. Nowadays, a lot of such user-relevant data is available from different providers and on different platforms. The "Base Map" combines these data from various sources and links swisstopo's own data with data from partner organisations. The "Base Map" serves as a central interface to further information and closes the gap between static information visualised on the map and the dynamic integration of information via data interfaces from third-party providers. Additional information is displayed to the user via interactive map elements such as points of interest (POI) or labels. Particular attention was paid to the design of the POI icons to ensure that they are intuitively comprehensible and follow established standards. The icons are kept in a standardised design language and maintain a Swissness while harmoniously complementing the "Base Map". The user can obtain further information by interacting with these map elements. The map thus becomes the key to accessing information that exceeds the mere map display.

This paper shows an iterative process of design and evaluation of icons for future interactive TV services. In doing the RNRT (French National Network of Research in Telecommunications) iTV project, we tried to generate icons easy to identify, associate and memorise for 32 categories and services of our iTV system. Through an iterative process, the Multiple Index Approach was applied until an acceptable icon set was achieved. In addition to existing evaluation criteria such as the intuitiveness, associativeness, preference and suitability with subjective certainty of users, we emphasised the importance of the learnability measured by recall tests. As a conclusion, we propose a methodology of icon design and evaluation for information appliances that integrate unfamiliar features with common users.

Options for labelling circular products: Icon design and consumer preferences

Colorizing icon is a challenging task, even for skillful artists, as it involves balancing aesthetics and practical considerations. Prior works have primarily focused on colorizing pixel‐based icons, which do not seamlessly integrate into the current vector‐based icon design workflow. In this paper, we propose a palette‐based colorization algorithm for vector icons without the need for rasterization. Our algorithm takes a vector icon and a five‐color palette as input and generates various colorized results for designers to choose from. Inspired by the common icon design workflow, we developed our algorithm to consist of two steps: generating a colorization template and performing the palette‐based color transfer. To generate the colorization templates, we introduce a novel vector icon colorization model that employs an MRF‐based loss and a color harmony loss. The color harmony loss encourages the alignment of the resulting color template with widely used harmony templates. We then map the predicted colorization template to chroma‐like palette colors to obtain diverse colorization results. We compare our results with those generated by previous pixel‐based icon colorization methods and validate the effectiveness of our algorithm by evaluations in both qualitative and quantitative measurements. Our method enables icon designers to explore diverse colorization results for a single icon using different color palettes while also efficiently evaluating the suitability of a color palette for a set of icons.

The VDM Meta-IV is an important bridge that joins application domain with implementation. This paper does not address the data reification aspect of the VDM. Rather the importance and centrality of the Meta-IV specification language in providing a “standard” framework for analysis and design is highlighted. In addressing the usefulness of the Meta-IV in the specification, design and implementation of graphical icons for a general purpose User Interface Management System, the authors chose to focus on the domain of Chinese characters — ideograms which have many characteristics in common with graphical icons. Two different (conceptual) models were developed. The first considered the ideogram as a stack of transparencies. The second viewed it as the modular composition of basic mathematical/graphical entities. Specifications of both models in the Meta-IV were developed and the declarative graphical programming language METAFONT was used in the implementation. To facilitate an appropriate entry level into learning and using METAFONT for the task in hand, the VDM Meta-IV was used to provide an abstract model of the language. The results reported indicate that use of the VDM Meta-IV as an expression of a common semantic base was a success.