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.