Recognisability of Pictographs on Electrical Consumer Products
The growing complexity of technical and electronic products has resulted in the creation of additional pictographs to allow for a visual interaction between the consumer and the product. The emergence of large amounts of different pictographs with the sam
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Abstract The growing complexity of technical and electronic products has resulted in the creation of additional pictographs to allow for a visual interaction between the consumer and the product. The emergence of large amounts of different pictographs with the same intended meaning may have resulted in the increase of potentially confusing situations, leading to doubts as to the effectiveness of pictographs on electrical equipment. It thus becomes important to know precisely how recognisable pictographs are in order to gauge their effectiveness. This study aimed to determine the recognisability of pictographs depicted on electrical consumer products in a Malaysian context. Eighteen selected pictographs representing six meanings (referent) were tested on 413 Malaysian respondents selected using purposive sampling. Each referent contained three pictograph variants that had the same meaning. The data obtained from the recognisability test resulted in the researcher suggesting six pictographs to be chosen as a single pictograph, each to represent six different referents. The usage of a single pictograph is expected to increase the probability for it to be seen, used, and studied frequently, which may then help with the avoidance of confusion amongst consumers.
Keywords Pictograph Product interaction Recognisability Visual recognition
M.S.M. Hasbullah (&) Faculty of Art and Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan, 18500 Machang, Kelantan Darul Naim, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] S.Z. Abidin Formgiving Design Research Group, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 S.Z. Abidin et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Colloquium of Art and Design Education Research (i-CADER 2015), DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0237-3_4
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M.S.M. Hasbullah and S.Z. Abidin
1 Introduction According to Lang [1], people in a social milieu communicate in different forms such as in speech, writing, and design. Generally, consumers have no access to the designer of products with which they interact. Thus this leads to consumers interacting with a product through its physical attributes or external visual references [2–4]. Based on Warell [5], recognition is based on familiarity, resemblance, or similarity, and requires previous precedents for comparison. The use of singular pictographs representing a single referent may enable it to be seen more often, thus assisting with the formation of pre-established references stored in long-term memory [6]. Physical properties of good products have always helped consumers decipher information and obtain accurate operational instructions. Information on a certain product can be interacted with in three ways, namely behavioural information (BI), assemblage information (AI), and conventional information (CI) [7]. BI refers to the physical properties of the product parts which serve as information that is directly perceived and operated on by users with t
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