Graphical Icons Research Articles

Influence of domain experience on icon recognition and preferences

ABSTRACT With the advance of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart sensor networks, accurate understanding of complex data via interface icons is critical for effective decision making, operation management and monitoring. In order to understand how the different domain experience among icon designers and users affects icon recognition and preference level among users, this paper takes environmental and operational sensors as a case study and organises two icon design workshops, in which icon recognition and preference tests are conducted based on the standard ISO 9186 methodology. Results reveal that differences in domain experience among designers and users do not impose a significant impact on users’ icon recognition levels. However, users new to the domain significantly prefer icons created by designers who share similar levels of domain experience with them. It provides a little reference for future environmental and operational sensor Graphical User Interface icon designers, decision makers, scientists and engineers to improve the icon design process.

Interventions to prevent women from developing gestational diabetes mellitus: an overview of Cochrane Reviews.

Interventions to prevent women from developing gestational diabetes mellitus: an overview of Cochrane Reviews.

Development of measurement instrument for visual qualities of graphical user interface elements (VISQUAL): a test in the context of mobile game icons

Graphical user interfaces are widely common and present in everyday human–computer interaction, dominantly in computers and smartphones. Today, various actions are performed via graphical user interface elements, e.g., windows, menus and icons. An attractive user interface that adapts to user needs and preferences is progressively important as it often allows personalized information processing that facilitates interaction. However, practitioners and scholars have lacked an instrument for measuring user perception of aesthetics within graphical user interface elements to aid in creating successful graphical assets. Therefore, we studied dimensionality of ratings of different perceived aesthetic qualities in GUI elements as the foundation for the measurement instrument. First, we devised a semantic differential scale of 22 adjective pairs by combining prior scattered measures. We then conducted a vignette experiment with random participant (n = 569) assignment to evaluate 4 icons from a total of pre-selected 68 game app icons across 4 categories (concrete, abstract, character and text) using the semantic scales. This resulted in a total of 2276 individual icon evaluations. Through exploratory factor analyses, the observations converged into 5 dimensions of perceived visual quality: Excellence/Inferiority, Graciousness/Harshness, Idleness/Liveliness, Normalness/Bizarreness and Complexity/Simplicity. We then proceeded to conduct confirmatory factor analyses to test the model fit of the 5-factor model with all 22 adjective pairs as well as with an adjusted version of 15 adjective pairs. Overall, this study developed, validated, and consequently presents a measurement instrument for perceptions of visual qualities of graphical user interfaces and/or singular interface elements (VISQUAL) that can be used in multiple ways in several contexts related to visual human-computer interaction, interfaces and their adaption.

Comparative Study of Icon Design for Mobile Application

Icons are widely used in mobile applications as visual displays that can assist the acquisition and understanding of information. An icon creates better visual perception with the ability to communicate meaning. Icon design is an approach of designing a graphic icon that can express a specific meaning. Icon design principles and elements are considered as major factors for mobile user interface that would lead to higher icon usability and acceptance of mobile applications. The study is undertaken to conduct a systematic review of published scientific literature on icon design elements for mobile applications. The chosen articles were published between 2014 and 2019, with full text provided and written in the English language. The electronic databases used were Google Scholar, Scopus, ProQuest, and Research Gate. Other sources include secondary data through books and web pages. The search terms used were “mobile icon design”, “mobile icon design principle”, “mobile icon design element” and “apps icon design”. The outcomes of this paper are a comparative study and proposed elements for icon design that will contribute to the field of icon design for mobile application. The proposed elements for icon design consist of recognizable, colour, simple, semantics, familiarity, shape, aesthetic, consistency, uniqueness and concreteness. These proposed elements for icon design can assist designers and researchers in designing icons for mobile application that would improve user experience by enhancing the meaning of icons to users.

Updating the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for the Spanish Population: The Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) Proposal.

Diet-related risk factors and physical inactivity are among the leading risk factors for disability and are responsible for a large proportion of the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases. Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) are useful tools for nutrition policies and public health strategies to promote healthier eating and physical activity. In this paper, we discuss the process followed in developing the dietary guidelines for the Spanish population by the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) and further explain the collaboration with primary healthcare practitioners as presented in the context of the NUTRIMAD 2018 international congress of SENC. From a health in all policies approach, SENC convened a group of experts in nutrition and public health to review the evidence on diet-health, nutrient intake and food consumption in the Spanish population, as well as food preparation, determinants and impact of diet on environmental sustainability. The collaborative group drafted the document and designed the graphic icon, which was then subject to a consultation process, discussion, and qualitative evaluation. Next, a collaborative group was established to plan a dissemination strategy, involving delegates from all the primary healthcare scientific societies in Spain. A product of this collaboration was the release of an attractive, easy-to-understand publication.

Design of Wearable Headset with Steady State Visually Evoked Potential-Based Brain Computer Interface

Brain–computer interface (BCI) is a system that allows people to communicate directly with external machines via recognizing brain activities without manual operation. However, for most current BCI systems, conventional electroencephalography (EEG) machines and computers are usually required to acquire EEG signal and translate them into control commands, respectively. The sizes of the above machines are usually large, and this increases the limitation for daily applications. Moreover, conventional EEG electrodes also require conductive gels to improve the EEG signal quality. This causes discomfort and inconvenience of use, while the conductive gels may also encounter the problem of drying out during prolonged measurements. In order to improve the above issues, a wearable headset with steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP)-based BCI is proposed in this study. Active dry electrodes were designed and implemented to acquire a good EEG signal quality without conductive gels from the hairy site. The SSVEP BCI algorithm was also implemented into the designed field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based BCI module to translate SSVEP signals into control commands in real time. Moreover, a commercial tablet was used as the visual stimulus device to provide graphic control icons. The whole system was designed as a wearable device to improve convenience of use in daily life, and it could acquire and translate EEG signal directly in the front-end headset. Finally, the performance of the proposed system was validated, and the results showed that it had excellent performance (information transfer rate = 36.08 bits/min).

Establishing Unusual-Weather Detection System Prototype Using Onboard Sensor Information

Weather has been closely associated with flight safety since the beginning of aviation history, with many aviation accidents and incidents occurring due to unusual weather conditions near airports. The current aviation unusual-weather detection systems use the weather information provided by ground meteorological observation stations in the airport vicinity. They can only detect unusual weather conditions near the ground surface because all the ground meteorological observation stations are at almost the same elevation. Consequently, this Paper aims to augment the current system by collecting vertical weather information in the air from a new data source, namely, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems. This Paper evaluates the correlation between actual aircraft Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast data and unusual weather conditions based on several unusual-weather detection algorithms and then uses machine learning to establish the system prototype to detect aviation unusual weather. These unusual-weather detection algorithms have been verified in this Paper to distinguish between normal and unusual weather conditions. The developed machine-learning model can provide accuracy rates of close to 98% for detecting aviation unusual weather conditions. Finally, we develop a system prototype graphical user interface with which users can interact through graphical icons and indicators. Users can directly get information regarding aircraft and weather from this system prototype. The testing of the developed models is validated by the actual Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast signals broadcast by several aircraft recorded at the airport.

User performance effects with graphical icons and training for elderly novice users: A case study on automatic teller machines

This study investigated the effects with training and graphical icons on task performance for elderly novice users on automatic teller machines (ATMs). 124 elderly novice users who had no prior ATM experience participated in the training and test of ATM usage. Participants in the control group (n = 62) were training to use the traditional text-based ATM interface meanwhile those in the experimental group (n = 62) were training to use the alternative ATM interface with graphical icons. They were asked to learn how to perform three major tasks of ATMs. A test immediately following the training and a test one month after training was carried out. Task completion score was used for measuring user performance. The results showed although training could help elderly novice users succeed in learning to use ATMs, they still had a significant decline in user performance in the test one month later compared with the immediate test. Participants of the experimental group outperformed those of the control group in both the immediate test and one month test after training, especially in the latter. The finding suggested graphical icons could help to improve the learning and retention of ATM usage for elderly novice users, especially the latter, which would compensate for the drawback of training and reduce forgetting rate to some extent. Well-designed graphical icons could benefit elderly novice users much from learning phase to retention phase. The findings of this study can be applied to guide the design and development of ATMs or other public technology devices considering elderly novice users.

Soaring out of the Private Sphere

Throughout World War II, newspaper comic strips and propaganda posters not only presented Americans with depictions of major shifts in societal norms, but also helped them accept the dramatic social changes spurred by total war. One historian has argued that pop cultural art that featured women in non-traditional jobs did important work during the war years by creating platforms that helped ease societal fears about the dramatic changes afoot in the workplace. This research argues that Flyin' Jenny and its brave aviatrix, Jenny Dare, was not only among these hard-working graphic stories and pop cultural icons, but that she was a pioneer on the comics pages by predating Wonder Woman and Brenda Starr. Each week, readers found their heroine competing against the most accomplished men in aviation. But this narrative was intentionally softened through paper dolls, reader-submitted content, and pin-up-like poses.

Aspect Analysis towards ArchiMate Diagrams

ArchiMate is the language to model Enterprise Architecture using diagrams. Although ArchiMate is the powerful language to describe the whole content of Enterprise Architecture, it is not easy to learn and use correctly ArchiMate because it has approximately 60 graphical icons. The application knowledge how to use ArchiMate is highly expected.In this paper, we propose the aspect analysis approach to design ArchiMate diagrams. A simple example to develop ArchiMate diagram using the approach is also explained. Moreover, a workshop design to educate ArchiMate using the approach for software engineers is discussed.

Interventions during pregnancy to prevent preterm birth: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews.

Interventions during pregnancy to prevent preterm birth: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews.

Comparison Study of Visual Search on 6 Different Types of Icons

In order to study the similarities and differences of the visual search features on different types of icons in the human-computer interface, using digital icons, English icons, Chinese icons, abstract icons, graphical icons and image icons as experimental materials. Combined with eye tracking devices, a visual search experiment was designed adopting E-Prime programming, and a comparative study was conducted from 3 aspects of reaction time, correct rate, and eye movement characteristics. The results of single factor analysis of variance indicated that: (1) The difference among 6 different types of icons in reaction time of visual search was statistically significant, and the reaction time was ranked as digital icons > English icons > Chinese icons > abstract icons > graphical icons > image icons. (2) In addition to the abstract icons, the other 5 types of icons in the visual search showed no obvious error. (3) As for the eye movement characteristics of 6 different types of icons, there were significant differences in fixation duration, fixation times, saccade amplitude and saccade speed, however, pupil diameter and blink frequency were not significantly different. The research results have reference value for the icon design and usability evaluation in human-computer interface.

Simplified Method for Rapid Field Assessment of Visual Acuity by First Responders After Ocular Injury.

Initial visual acuity after ocular injury is an important measure, as it is an accurate predictor of final visual outcome and gives a rapid estimation of the overall severity of the injury, thereby aiding evacuation prioritization. We devised a simple method for rapidly assessing visual acuity in the field without having to rely on formal screening cards. Using common objects, icons, and text found in the injury zone - for example, common military name tapes, rank insignias, patches, emblems, and helmet camouflage bands, which will be known collectively as the Army Combat Optotypes (ACOs) - a Snellen-equivalent method of assessing visual acuity was devised and correlated to the ocular trauma score (OTS). Ability to read the ACOs at 2, 3, and 5 ft correlates with acuities in the range from 20/20 to 20/400. Identification of ACOs with visual acuity of 20/50 and 20/200 approximates important inflection points of severity for the OTS. Accurately assessing visual acuity in the field after ocular injury provides essential information but does not require sophisticated screening equipment. Pertinent and accurate acuities can be rapidly estimated using commonly available text or graphical icons such as standard name tapes, patches, and rank insignias.

The use of Graphic User Interface for development of a user-friendly CRS-Stack software

The development of a user-friendly Common Reflection Surface (CRS) Stack software that has been built by implementing Graphical User Interface (GUI) is described in this paper. The original CRS-Stack software developed by WIT Consortium is compiled in the unix/linux environment, which is not a user-friendly software, so that a user must write the commands and parameters manually in a script file. Due to this limitation, the CRS-Stack become a non popular method, although applying this method is actually a promising way in order to obtain better seismic sections, which have better reflector continuity and S/N ratio. After obtaining successful results that have been tested by using several seismic data belong to oil companies in Indonesia, it comes to an idea to develop a user-friendly software in our own laboratory. Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a type of user interface that allows people to interact with computer programs in a better way. Rather than typing commands and module parameters, GUI allows the users to use computer programs in much simple and easy. Thus, GUI can transform the text-based interface into graphical icons and visual indicators. The use of complicated seismic unix shell script can be avoided. The Java Swing GUI library is used to develop this CRS-Stack GUI. Every shell script that represents each seismic process is invoked from Java environment. Besides developing interactive GUI to perform CRS-Stack processing, this CRS-Stack GUI is design to help geophysicists to manage a project with complex seismic processing procedures. The CRS-Stack GUI software is composed by input directory, operators, and output directory, which are defined as a seismic data processing workflow. The CRS-Stack processing workflow involves four steps; i.e. automatic CMP stack, initial CRS-Stack, optimized CRS-Stack, and CRS-Stack Supergather. Those operations are visualized in an informative flowchart with self explanatory system to guide the user inputting the parameter values for each operation. The knowledge of CRS-Stack processing procedure is still preserved in the software, which is easy and efficient to be learned. The software will still be developed in the future. Any new innovative seismic processing workflow will also be added into this GUI software.

Emoticons: Wealth of minimalism on the internet

Online communication and all the innovations it brings open up many new fields of analysis in areas such as linguistics, psychology or sociology, as well as all their interdisciplinary combinations. One such innovation, to a greatest extent connected with the virtual world and virtual communication, is described in this paper. Emoticons are first defined and then their origin is presented, including the context in which they originated and the reasons for their popularity. The paper then addresses the evolution of the appearance of emoticons from the simplest graphic icons comprising of only punctuation, to the most diverse pictures and stickers representing various objects and concepts. Finally, three functions of emoticons are described in detail: conveying facial expressions, conveying emotions and expressing pragmatic functions such as positive attitudes, irony or hedges that either mitigate face threatening acts such as complaints or requests, or reinforce face saving acts such as promises or thanks.

Designing an Online Graph-Oriented Collaborative Argumentation Tool for Middle School Students: A Faculty Expert’s Perspective

The objective of this design case is to describe a cross-cultural, online graph-oriented collaborative argumentation tool for middle school students from a faculty expert’s perspective, and discuss the processes that were instrumental in creating the tool. Supported by the professional staff in the Digital Convergence Lab (DCL) at Northern Illinois University, a student team was involved in the design process of such a tool. The team designed two versions of graphic icons to represent the essential elements of argumentation skills. The first version of icon designs used human figures and symbols to represent two groups, five argumentation elements, and one icon for teacher input. After middle school students, in the United States and Taiwan, experienced the icon designs, the design team refined them to be gender and culturally neutral. The design team also modified the design of the user interface throughout the project.

A study on the relationships between different presentation modes of graphical icons and users’ attention

With the vigorous development of applications (App), graphical user interfaces (GUI) have been widely found in computers and handheld devices. This study aimed to explore the relationships between different presentation modes of graphical icons and users’ attention. An eye tracker was employed to measure each participant’s experimental data; in addition, subjective evaluation of attention was conducted. Thus, the optimum presentation mode attracting the most attention might be determined. The experiment was designed to investigate two variables: icon composition and background. Through permutation and combination, six presentation modes were obtained as follows: line + positive background (M1), plane + positive background (M2), line + negative background (M3), plane + negative background (M4), line + no background (M5), and plane + no background (M6). Thirty-six participants were requested to view thirty stimuli, or the contour drawings of graphical icons, presented simultaneously in six modes mentioned above. The participants’ fixation duration, fixation frequency, and subjective evaluation of attention were analyzed through two-way ANOVA. The analytical results showed that in terms of the three performance indicators above, M4 performed the best among the six presentation modes. Moreover, regarding icon composition, planes performed better than lines in terms of the three performance indicators. As for background, negative background performed the best in terms of the three performance indicators, positive background ranked second, and no background performed the worst. The findings can serve as a reference when icons are researched or designed in the future.

Gesture Recognition: A Survey

With increasing use of computers in our daily lives, lately there has been a rapid increase in the efforts to develop a better human computer interaction interface. The need of easy to use and advance types of human-computer interaction with natural interfaces is more than ever. In the present framework, the UI (User Interface) of a computer allows user to interact with electronic devices with graphical icons and visual indicators, which is still inconvenient and not suitable for working in virtual environments. An interface which allow user to communicate through gestures is the next step in the direction of advance human computer interface. In the present paper author explore different aspects of gesture recognition techniques.

THYROSIM App for Education and Research Predicts Potential Health Risks of Over-the-Counter Thyroid Supplements.

Computer simulation tools for education and research are making increasingly effective use of the Internet and personal devices. To facilitate these activities in endocrinology and metabolism, a mechanistically based simulator of human thyroid hormone and thyrotropin (TSH) regulation dynamics was developed and further validated, and it was implemented as a facile and freely accessible web-based and personal device application: the THYROSIM app. This study elucidates and demonstrates its utility in a research context by exploring key physiological effects of over-the-counter thyroid supplements. THYROSIM has a simple and intuitive user interface for teaching and conducting simulated "what-if" experiments. User-selectable "experimental" test-input dosages (oral, intravenous pulses, intravenous infusions) are represented by animated graphical icons integrated with a cartoon of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis. Simulations of familiar triiodothyronine (T3), thyroxine (T4), and TSH temporal dynamic responses to these exogenous stimuli are reported graphically, along with normal ranges on the same single interface page; and multiple sets of simulated experimental results are superimposable to facilitate comparative analyses. This study shows that THYROSIM accurately reproduces a wide range of published clinical study data reporting hormonal kinetic responses to large and small oral hormone challenges. Simulation examples of partial thyroidectomies and malabsorption illustrate typical usage by optionally changing thyroid gland secretion and/or gut absorption rates--expressed as percentages of normal--as well as additions of oral hormone dosing, all directly on the interface, and visualizing the kinetic responses to these challenges. Classroom and patient education usage--with public health implications--is illustrated by predictive simulated responses to nonprescription thyroid health supplements analyzed previously for T3 and T4 content. Notably, it was found that T3 in supplements has potentially more serious pathophysiological effects than does T4--concomitant with low-normal TSH levels. Some preparations contain enough T3 to generate thyrotoxic conditions, with supernormal serum T3-spiking and subnormal serum T4 and TSH levels and, in some cases, with normal or low-normal range TSH levels due to thyroidal axis negative feedback. These results suggest that appropriate regulation of these products is needed.

Dietary Guidelines in the world.

Hydration status, energy balance, dietary pattern, emotional balance and environmental sustainability are nowadays key axes for action in community nutrition and public health. Many countries have included recommendations about water and fluid intake in their Dietary Guidelines (DG). In some cases, DG graphical icons include a water tap, a glass of water or a traditional container, such as Argentina, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland or China. In other cases, the recommended amount of water and fluids is represented by a specific number of glasses of water. Such an icon has been more frequently used in designs targeted to older population groups.