Design Guideline of Pictorial Symbols for Communication Support Based upon Subjective Evaluation of Comprehensibility

In this paper, we propose design guidelines of comprehensive pictorial symbols for communication support [1]. We conducted the questionnaire survey for evaluating understandability of pictorial symbols reproduced by JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) committee. Then, we examined features of pictorial symbols whose percentage of questions answered correctly was high. According to these features, we established design guidelines of the pictorial symbols and the standardization of the design [2]. Then, we redesigned confusable pictorial symbols of JIS committee based on our proposed guidelines, and evaluated the improvement of these symbols’ understandability. 1. DESIGN GUIDELINES INDUCED BY SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION In order to establish design guidelines of comprehensive pictorial symbols for communication support, we conducted the questionnaire survey for evaluating understandability of pictorial symbols reproduced by JIS committee [3]. We cannot deny that these symbols depend on our culture. Total 350 pictorial symbols were tested in the questionnaire. We asked the meaning of individual pictorial symbol to 100 subjects of Japanese and Chinese (50 males and 50 females who were about 20 years old). Figure 1 shows the results of questionnaire survey. Then, we examined features of pictorial symbols whose percentage of questions answered correctly was high. Based on these features of comprehensive pictorial symbols, we established design guidelines as follows. To reduce the use of the combination of pictorial symbols as less as possible.