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Abstract

Following the Boucart & Humphreys (1995) method, this paper reports a study in which response time to three groups of semantically related icons were examined. This study was used as a model by which to examine the ability of human observers to attend solely to one icon property without being influenced by other salient icon information. Humans are easily influenced by their experience of an icon: they tend to judge very simple, but unfamiliar icons (as defined by an automated analysis) as complex (Forsythe et al., 2003). This means that when humans are unreliable judges about the degree of detail or intricacy in an icon. The degree of detail or intricacy in an icon is one property is that lends itself to automation (Forsythe et al., 2003). As a decision-making aid, an automated system would make the process of icon development and modification a less speculative, more cost-effective activity.

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Semantic Information Influences the Degree to Which Human Observers Perceive Detail and Intricacy within an Icon

Abstract

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