Development and Evaluation of Symbols and Icons: A Comparison of the Production and Focus Group Methods

Abstract

The prolific use of symbols in a wide-array of industries requires an understanding of how to develop meaningful symbols. We hypothesized that subjects interacting in a focus group environment would develop more meaningful symbols than a comparable group of subjects working as individuals. Two methodologies for developing symbols were compared, the Focus Group (FG) method and the Production Group (PG) method. Both groups developed symbols based on 17 different symbol scenarios. Under the FG condition, 24 subjects worked in four separate groups of six subjects. Under the PG condition, 26 subjects received the same scenarios but worked independently. A subject pool of potential symbol users (N = 72) then ranked the meaningfulness of the symbols developed for each scenario. Between four and eight symbols were evaluated for each scenario, with an equal number of symbols from each development method represented. For the 17 sets of symbols developed, the FG condition developed the top ranked symbol 13 times and the PG condition developed the top ranked symbol 4 times (χ² (2) = 4.76, p = 0.029). Further analyses revealed that, when significant differences in meaningfulness were obtained between the top-ranked FG symbol and the top-ranked PG symbol (10 of the 17 comparisons), the FG method produced more meaningful symbols (χ² (2) = 3.60, P=0.057). Furthermore, the FG method required less than one-third of the developmental time required by the PG method.