Metaphor and simplification strategies in the design of tourist guidebooks

Abstract

Tourist guidebooks play an important role in providing supplementary information to travelers during their journeys and enable them to identify orientation and location and obtain other information. Hence, the design of icons used in tourist guidebooks is crucial. A fundamental design principle for indicative icons is that they should be simple and easy to understand. In this study, 66 university students were recruited in order to experimentally investigate how two strategies – simplification and metaphor – affect the design of tourist guidebooks. The findings demonstrate that to achieve ‘semantic conveyance,’ the use of metaphor or simplification combined with metaphor can provide the optimal effect. For ‘design quality,’ the use of simplification has the most significant effect. For ‘symbolic significance’ and ‘comprehensive evaluation,’ metaphor or simplification combined with metaphor can achieve the most significant effect. Finally, this paper proposes recommendations and considerations for future studies.