Concrete Icons Research Articles

Keep it real, keep it simple: the effects of icon characteristics on visual search

ABSTRACT Previous research examining how icons’ concreteness, visual complexity, and distinctiveness influence visual search performance have led to disagreements over which icon characteristic most affects behaviour. These icon characteristics are often poorly defined and interrelated, particularly concreteness. Accordingly, drawing strong inferences about the robustness of concreteness as a factor in search for visual icons is challenging. Here, we operationalised concreteness into three distinct levels: concrete icons were images of real-world objects, photorealistic icons were drawings of the object, and abstract icons were images with no conceptual information. Across two experiments, participants rated each icon on various icon characteristics (e.g. concreteness, visual complexity) to provide a ground truth for these factors and to validate our concreteness manipulation. In a separate study, naive participants performed a visual search task for a target icon. Oculomotor measures were utilised to elucidate how various icon characteristics affected search performance. Although we were unable to fully disassociate concreteness from visual complexity, we found that icons high in concreteness improved search performance, but as visual complexity increased, object identification became slower. This was largely demonstrated through increased verification times for complex targets. The present set of studies indicate that highly concrete and simple icons engender search benefits.

Study on the Differences of Icon Cognition of Graphical Interface for Age-Friendly Design

ABSTRACT Icon cognitive impairment is one of the main difficulties for older users to use smart products. This study explores the impact of icon style, icon concreteness and both together on understanding icons by comparing the cognitive differences between two groups of users, young and old. The performance of different types of icons on cognitive performance was analyzed specifically through a comprehensive cognitive load assessment method of behavioral, physiological and subjective data. The results showed that the cognitive performance of skeuomorphism concrete icons was higher and the cognitive load was lower when the user group was novice or older users with less experience in interacting with the GUI; the cognitive performance of flat concrete icons was higher and the cognitive load was lower when the user group was familiar or young users with more experience in interacting with the GUI. From the perspective of cognitive differences between young and old, the results of this study provide a reference for future icon design of interactive interfaces for older people smart terminals to help designers and developers achieve a better user experience for the aging group, which has practical significance for the age-friendly design of graphical interfaces.

Nudge and bias in subjective ratings? The role of icon sets in determining ratings of icon characteristics

Subjective ratings have been central to the evaluation of icon characteristics. The current study examined biases in ratings in relation to the context in which icons are presented. Context was manipulated between participants, with some groups rating icon sets with limited variability, and others rating icon sets with wide variability. It was predicted that the context created by the icon set would influence participants’ ratings; when the range of icons was limited, this would create bias given participants’ expectation that a full range of icon values was being presented. Six key icon characteristics were rated, which were visual (visual complexity, appeal), affective (valence, feelings), and semantic (concreteness, semantic distance). Some icon characteristics were susceptible to rating bias while others were not. Where subjective judgements were being made of visual icon characteristics (appeal/complexity) and highly concrete icons which were very pictorial, there was clear evidence of substantial bias in ratings. The same susceptibility to bias was not evident when ratings relied solely on learned semantic associations or were associated with the emotional attributions made to icons. The dynamic nature of the ratings bias was demonstrated when the rating context was changed without participants’ knowledge. When participants rated further blocks of icons providing a different range of the to-be-rated characteristic, this resulted in rapid and dramatic changes in rating behaviour. These findings demonstrate the need for representative sampling of icon characteristics to avoid ratings bias. Practically, this is important when determining the usability of newly designed icon sets in order to avoid over-valuing or under-valuing of key characteristics.

Icon format on the in-vehicle HMI affects drivers’ cognitive performance

ABSTRACT Although there have been many studies on icon preferences and search performances in the past, only a few principles, criteria, and guidelines may be applicable to the design of icons in a time- and safety-critical interaction (driving) context. This study combines a familiarity training task with an icon-semantic meaning recall task to explore the effects of icon format, concreteness and familiarity on drivers’ icon cognitive performance. Icons in 3 formats were created as experimental stimuli. Subsequently, 39 participants were divided into three groups, and each group was required to complete a familiarity training task with a specific icon format. After the participants were familiarised with the icons over two training sessions, their abilities to recall relevant semantic meanings when seeing icons were tested. The results indicated that participants responded more accurately and quickly to the icons in the graphic & keyword format than to the icons in the other two formats. However, the differences between different formats greatly decreased with an increase in familiarity. In addition, compared with concrete icons, abstract icons had an advantage in recognition speed, especially when the icons were unfamiliar. The findings in this study provide practical guidelines for the icon design of in-vehicle HMI.

Inhibition Effect of Audio-Visual Semantic Interference in Chinese Interface: An ERP Study of Concrete Icons and Chinese Characters

In this study, event-related potential (ERP) was used to examine whether the brain has an inhibition effect on the interference of audio-visual information in the Chinese interface. Concrete icons (flame and snowflake) or Chinese characters (暖 and 凉) with opposite semantics were used as target carriers, and colors (red and blue) and speeches (热 and 冷) were used as audio-visual intervention stimuli. In the experiment, target carrier and audio-visual intervention were presented in a random combination, and the subjects needed to determine whether the semantics of the two matched quickly. By comparing the overall cognitive performance of two carriers, it was found that the brain had a more significant inhibition effect on audio-visual intervention stimuli with different semantics (SBH/LBH and SRC/LRC) relative to the same semantics (SRH/LRH). The semantic mismatch caused significant N400, indicating that semantic interference in the interface information would trigger the brain’s inhibition effect. Therefore, the more complex the semantic matching of interface information was, the higher the amplitude of N400 became. The results confirmed that the semantic relationship between target carrier and audio-visual intervention was the key factor affecting the cognitive inhibition effect. Moreover, under different intervention stimuli, the ERP’s negative activity caused by Chinese characters in frontal and parietal-occipital regions was more evident than that by concrete icons, indicating that concrete icons had a lower inhibition effect than Chinese characters. Therefore, we considered that this inhibition effect was based on the semantic constraints of the target carrier itself, which might come from the knowledge learning and intuitive experience stored in the human brain.

Interface Adaptation to Novice Older Adults’ Mental Models through Concrete Metaphors

ABSTRACTMetaphors could be used to help older adults build mental models of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications and services and thereby reduce the number of interaction problems, but currently, metaphors generally are not tailored to these older adults, and their construction remains vague. Inspired by concrete icons, this study proposes concrete metaphors to help novice older adults understand ICT applications and services and retains their knowledge over time. A new communication application based on concrete metaphors was designed, developed, and comparatively tested against another application based on abstract metaphors over a period of 9 days. The results indicated that the application with concrete metaphors contributed to fewer perception and cognition errors, higher usage intention, higher satisfaction, and higher preference compared to the application with abstract metaphors. In addition, the advantage of concrete metaphors was lasting, unlike concrete icons. These findings indicated that concrete metaphors could be an icebreaker or stepping stone to draw novice older adults into the information society. To further increase the impact of concrete metaphors, representing real-world operations is an essential challenge.

Corrosion condition evaluations of historic concrete icons

Corrosion condition assessments of historic concrete structures can provide the owner with invaluable information regarding the current condition of the structure, the factors contributing to the corrosion damage, and can also project when the structure may exhibit further material loss. This information is vital to be proactive in the repair process which is imperative to minimize loss to the structure. When dealing with a highly significant concrete structure, the investigative team is often faced with restrictive parameters limiting the amount of data which can be collected. This paper discusses challenges in preserving ‘historic concrete’ and provides four case studies of predictive corrosion condition assessments which were carried out to help in the decision making process.

An experimental research study on the effect of pictorial icons on a user-learner’s performance

This experimental counterbalanced repeated measures study on the effect of three types of icons (abstract, pictorial and drawing) on the learning and performance of two types of learners (abstract and concrete) was conducted during the Spring 2000-Spring 2001 semesters at the University of Central Florida. The counterbalanced lesson followed by a counterbalanced and completely randomized quiz on three levels was field tested in the Spring-Summer 2000 on 37 UCF graduate students and final tested in the Fall 2000-Spring 2001 on 53 UCF graduate student subjects. A general linear model repeated measures ANOVA revealed that icon type had a significant effect on the learning and performance of both types of learners. Pictorial icons resulted in best scores. No significant interaction was found between icon type and learner type even though on a matched condition, abstract learners with abstract icon resulted in better scores than when concrete learners were matched with concrete (pictorial and drawing) icons. Implications for future research are drawn as well as practical applications identified in the field of teaching, learning, training and performance.

Effects of training and representational characteristics in icon design

Icons are a very important component of graphical user interfaces. However, icon design is still predominantly artistic in nature and as a result icon selection is generally based on usability evaluations after a set of alternative icons are developed. This process tends to be time-consuming and costly. In this research, we address the issues ofwhat should be depicted in an icon, given the function it should represent, and how training affects the performance of novice users when using an iconic interface. A set of 36 concrete icons (12 functions) were selected and tested with a total of 30 participants. The experimental results indicate that complete representations are generally superior for both untrained and trained participants. Results also show that trained participants had shorter response times when compared to untrained participants. Further analysis suggests that ambiguity, uniqueness and dominance are three important aspects to consider when designing and developing icons. Applications of this research include the design of appropriate icons for graphical user interfaces prior to usability testing and the importance of a short training period to illustrate the composition of an icon in an effort to improve the mental model associated with each design.

The Usefulness of Icons on the Computer Interface: Effect of Graphical Abstraction and Functional Representation on Experienced and Novice Users

Icons have become a main component of interface design (Familant & Detweiler, 1993). This study examined functional representation and graphical abstraction components of icons using experienced and novice computer users. Current interface (e.g. word processing) icons were evaluated in a search and select paradigm. Experienced participants were faster and more accurate than novice participants. Functionally representative and graphically concrete icons were recognized faster and more accurately than functionally arbitrary and graphically abstract icons, respectively. Experienced participants were affected more by graphical abstraction than novice participants. Graphically concrete and functionally representative icons were recognized faster than any other type of icon in the study. These data suggest when creating icons, the icons should be made to look as much like the object of reference as possible.

Development and validation of icons varying in their abstractness

Icons are used widely in human-computer interfaces. The level of abstractness-concreteness of an icon and its effect upon performance is of widespread interest. The authors have devised a quantitative measure for abstractness based on the complexity of the icon. They test their metric against subjective judgments of abstractness as identified by two different groups of subjects. After ranking two sets of ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ icons, the authors examined how well the icons were matched to the Pascal constructs that they represented. Further experiments were conducted using different groups of subjects to check whether correct matching of the icons with constructs was influenced by context. In summary the authors found that their metric was a good match for subjective measures of abstractness-concreteness. They also found that there is a better identification of concrete icons than abstract icons. Finally, it was shown that context does affect the correct identification of icons.

Transfer between Icon Sets and Ratings of Icon Concreteness and Appropriateness

Two studies are reported on the usability of icons. Firstly, an experiment was carried out to investigate the transfer of performance between sets of icons for different computer functions. The aim was to determine whether users would benefit from common underlying elements within concrete icon sets, compared with unrelated abstract icons. A cross-over study was employed whereby subjects performed an icon identification task with one set of icons (a concrete or abstract learning set) and then transferred to another set of icons (a concrete or abstract transfer set). It was hypothesized that transferring from concrete to concrete icons would yield the best results due to the use of repeated elements in the concrete sets. Identification time data did not produce significant results to support the hypothesis. Significant results were yielded from the error data, this demonstrated the superiority of concrete icons, but no advantage came from previous experience with a concrete set. A second study examined the rating of the icons used in the first study in terms of concreteness and appropriateness. Appropriateness was found to be a reasonable predictor of icon identification time.

Designing Screen Icons: Ranking and Matching Studies

Two studies from a screen icon testing program are reported. An appropriateness ranking study is a preliminary procedure that screens several candidate designs and results in a single image content for each icon. Subjects preferred the more concrete icons to the more abstract ones. Familiar image content was also preferred. The matching study determined how well the icons worked as a related set, and how likely it is that individual icons would be confused with each other. The icons for Clock, Drawing, and Voice score high on correct and low on incorrect. The symmetric and asymmetric confusions are identified and explained in terms of visual and conceptual similarity. There is a discussion of the methodology used.

A visual approach to simulation of icon‐based Chinese input method

Abstract This paper presents a visual programming environment for users to develop their own defined icon‐based Chinese input methods. It will show the following four aspects. First, Chinese characters are concrete icons (decomposition graphs or webs). Second, a grammar that generates the above mentioned webs is a context‐free web grammar. Third, an icon‐based Chinese input method defines semantic rules to the production rules of the web grammar which then becomes an attributed web grammar. Fourth, a Chinese input simulator is a machine that accepts these webs. Developing such a simulator can be regarded as the construction of a user‐defined application program under the proposed visual programming environment. This paper also shows that form‐based visual languages included in the environment can be used to specify ways of evaluation and simulation in the user‐defined simulator.

Catholic Human Rights Theory: Four Challenges to an Intellectual Tradition

My own beliefs about human rights have always been grounded on very concrete icons and images. Around my neck, for example, I wear a pendant made by a political prisoner in Chile. I have been privileged to meet, through Amnesty International or church connections, prisoners of conscience such as Mr. Babu, the former vice-president of Tanzania, who testify to the efficacy of human rights advocacy from a center in the first world. In Zambia and Peru, I have seen little children, whose subsistence rights have been denied, being treated for malnutrition by staff from missionary clinics. These human images and icons have led me to concrete commitments which include active membership in two international human rights organizations: Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic church as a transnational human rights network of advocacy (I am referring not only to the Vatican's participation in the United Nations and its world-wide orchestration of refugee services through Catholic Relief Services but also to more local human rights networks such as, for example, the Vicariate of Solidarity in Santiago, Chile, or, in our country, the church-sponsored sanctuary movement for refugees from El Salvador and Guatamala).