基于设计符号学的图标设计

为进一步探讨图标设计的识别性问题,提出了基于设计符号学的图标设计方法.该方法将图标设计分成语意、语构、语境和语用4个维度,根据设计符号学原理对图标设计与用户研究进行认知、整合上的创新,构成一个闭环式的图标设计理论模型;分析了基于设计符号学的图标设计过程,以图标代数理论为基础提出基于设计符号学的图标设计表达模型,探讨了语意和语构2个维度的重要性.采用.NET技术在Windows 7平台上构建了一个辅助图标设计过程的计算机原型系统IDAS1.0,其中包括快速设计模块、设计符号学评价模块和知识库模块.基于该系统可以实现图标方案的快速生成,构建设计知识库及获取专家的设计符号学评价,从而提高图标的设计和认知效率,验证了基于设计符号学的图标设计理论体系.     

基于结合分析的产品意象造型设计研究

为设计出符合消费者感性需求的产品,提出基于结合分析的产品意象造型 设计方法。首先采用多元尺度法和聚类分析法选择典型样本,进而应用形态分析法确定产品 的属性和各属性的水平。其次,利用因子分析法确定产品的感性意象,并用造型吸引力对其 进行整合。在此基础上,使用对应分析法对感性意象和产品属性的关系进行探讨。最后,利 用结合分析建立二者之间的数学模型。该文结合办公座椅进行研究,结果表明该方法是正确 可行的。     

基于用户满意度的图标动态形式设计

为了增加用户对人机界面图标的可理解性,提高用户认知效率,提出一种基于用户满意度的图标动态形式评价方法.利用速率、方向、范围、路径分别定义图标旋转、左右、上下平移、缩放4种基本动态形式;采用阈限测量法获得图标动作时间的上阈、舒适值、下阈,通过线性回归建立图标动作时间与图标动作幅度间映射关系;通过Likert量表进行动态图标范围适合度调查;结合方差分析和最小显著性差异实验,分析图标动作时间和图标动作幅度对用户偏好满意度、认知负荷的影响,并用于指导动态图标设计.实验结果表明在4种基本动态形式下,移动端的动态图标最佳动作时间在450 ms左右;动作时间与动作幅度为正相关,设备尺寸、图标复杂度对动作时间的设定有决定性的影响;动作幅度的设定与设备尺寸相关.为人机界面中动态图标设计提供了一种动态图标量化分析模型,以便为人机界面的动态图标设计提供一定的理论参考.     

数据驱动的多图标移动界面设计研究

为了设计师和学者能更好地在工作和学习中进行设计决策,理解并学习数据驱动设计是一个新颖而重要的议题。本文以通用移动设备为样本,采用问卷调查法和差异分析法进行了数据统计与对比评估,分析了用户对于多图标页面的使用偏好和体验效果。实验分析结果表明,页面图标数量和层级平衡对用户体验产生较大影响,并据所获结论归纳出可用性多图标页面的影响因子。     

基于多层次灰色综合评价法的工业设计方案优选决策模型及其应用

为辅助企业在产品设计方案评估阶段进行合理地决策,减少设计的盲目性和主观性,基于多层 次灰色综合评价法构建了工业产品设计方案优选决策模型。在评价流程中,首先依据层次分析法(AHP)与熵权 法通过定性、定量分析,合理地进行评价指标权重系数的确定。其次,采用灰色关联度分析法对各设计方案进 行灰色加权关联度的计算,确定其排序,并依据结果完成对设计方案的综合评价与优选工作。基于该模型完成 了对某款多旋翼无人机的 5 个设计方案的优先级排序,并将结果依据熵权 TOPSIS 法进行验证,以证明其可行 性。最后,基于指标权重与方案得分完成了对优选方案的优化,并对方案进行三维建模视觉化展示,有效地表 明了基于多层次灰色综合评价法的无人机产品评价优选决策模型的设计辅助作用。     

移动端应用软件中启动图标的设计方法探究

移动设备的智能化为人们的生活、工作提供了一个新的媒介平台,大量的、具有各种功能性的应用软件出现在这一领域。启动图标是应用软件的主要入口,能直接引导用户下载并使用应用程序。而且图标的外观会影响该应用软件的下载量,甚至会导致平台所有者拒绝发布该产品,所以对启动图标进行研究是十分必要的。文章通过分析目前国内外移动设备中应用软件的图标呈现的现状,探讨科学的设计方法和设计流程,为应用软件的图标设计提供可行性参考。     

轻薄金属风 DELL XPS 14z

戴尔XPS系列定位十高性能影音娱乐应用，虽然没有Alienware系列炫目，夸张的外形和外形设计也令这个系列的产品拥有不错的性价比，目前各大厂商都准备或已经推出基于UltraBook概念的笔记本，     

包装语意传达与定位设计研究

包装语意的准确传达,需要包装符号体系编码与解码过程的高度统一,要完成包装语意的释义和传达,在包装符号体系构建过程中,就必须对包装定位设计进行系统研究。本文依据包装语意理论,从包装产品的定位分析、目标消费者定位分析、包装产品的品牌分析及竞争对手同类产品包装分析等四个方面展开细化研究,并尝试总结了影响包装语意传达的系列因子。     

煤矿瓦斯灾害危险性评价方法研究

针对瓦斯灾害对煤矿安全生产造成严重危害的问题,通过应用层次分析法确立了瓦斯灾害评价指标体系的4个层次及其影响因素和权重,建立了瓦斯事故的灾害评价模型;提出了影响瓦斯灾害的4个主要因素及3个后果严重性指标,并基于层次分析法对这些因素的量化方法及影响权重进行了研究,从而定量地揭示出瓦斯灾害的主要原因,对防止煤矿瓦斯事故的发生具有重要意义。     

双自由度后坐保险机构敏感因子对比

目前国内对双自由度后坐保险机构的研究大多集中于对其动态特性的分析和仿真,对机构运动影响敏感因子的分析很少。借助计算机仿真,运用正交试验设计方法对双自由度后坐保险机构敏感因子进行分析,确定各敏感因子对机构影响程度的主次顺序以及主要敏感因子。结果表明上质量块质量对其运动特性影响最大并为主要敏感因子,然后依次是惯性簧刚度,惯性簧长度和下质量块质量的影响。     

Using HCA and TOPSIS approaches in personal digital assistant menu–icon interface design

Mobile electronic products have recently become very popular because of their portable convenience and versatile functions. The personal digital assistant (PDA) can even access the Internet. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement in the PDA interface. This research proposes a systematic approach to analyze, generate and evaluate a PDA integrated menu–icon interface design for the DigitHub Company based on customer requirements.Hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) is incorporated with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to identify and categorize functional PDA menus and their corresponding icons. We evaluate the importance of each of the different functional menus and categories. We generate five PDA menu–icon interface design alternatives that meet the proposed design guidelines, and we evaluate each for their respective feasibilities. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is applied to measure the overall operating performance of the five PDA menu–icon interface design alternatives. The evaluation results show that the preferred design is option PDA₅, a hierarchical and separated menu–icon layout style that features a two-layer menu structure.We expect that the proposed development procedure for the generation and evaluation of PDA menu–icon design alternatives based on customer requirements will be of interest to interface designers who wish to focus on mobile products.

Relevance to industry

This paper proposes an integrated procedure for designing PDA menu–icon interfaces. Our methodology should help in the creation and optimization of screen layouts for mobile phones, global positioning system (GPS) navigation devices, digital cameras and related screen interfaces.     

Influence mechanism of icon semantics on visual search performance: Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Explicit icon semantics can reduce the difficulty of understanding complex visual information. Optimizing the icon semantics and text semantics of icons can effectively improve the cognitive performance of digital interfaces. This paper adopts visual search tasks to study the effects of different combinations of icon semantic familiarity and the presence or absence of text on icon search performance under horizontal and vertical layouts. The behavioral experiment results show that under two layouts: 1. The main effect of icon semantics is significant, and the search performance increases with the increase of semantic familiarity. 2. The main effect of text is significant, and the search performance is negatively correlated with the addition of text. The eye movement experiment found that the semantic familiarity of icons had a significant impact on average fixation time. Furthermore, the number of fixation points changed significantly after the text variable was added. Therefore, there was no significant difference in the number of fixation points in the horizontal layout, and icon semantics was the main influencing factor in visual search. In the vertical layout, there was no significant difference in average fixation time, and text was the main influencing factor of visual search. The results show that the semantic familiarity of icons and different combinations with or without text significantly affect visual search performance in horizontal and vertical layouts. This paper provides a theoretical reference for the combination of icons and text in interface design.     

Cervical spine biomechanics and task performance during touchscreen computer operations

The effects of different touchscreen interface designs on operators' task performance and cervical spine biomechanics were investigated in the current study. Fifteen male participants performed “Whac-a-Mole” type of visual target pinpointing tasks on a touchscreen monitor with different display sizes, icon sizes, icon colors and task difficulties. Participants' task performance, cervical spine biomechanics and upper extremity muscle activities were recorded and compared. Results demonstrated that an oversized desktop touchscreen monitor and small icons generated negative impacts on participants’ task performance and biomechanical measurements. Lighter icon color and more difficult task requirement generated worse task performance but had limited impact on cervical spine biomechanics. In addition, when using an oversized touchscreen monitor, the impacts of icon size and task difficulty seem to be magnified. Our results demonstrated that a more human-oriented interface design could help improve task performance and reduce neck and upper extremity injuries while operating touchscreen monitors.Relevance to industryIn this study we investigated how a number of different design factors could influence task performance as well as cervical spine biomechanics when using touchscreen monitors. Knowledge gained from the current study could help the design of future applications that involve finger touching operations on touchscreen monitors.     

Effects of smartphone icon background shapes and figure/background area ratios on visual search performance and user preferences

Smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, users are provided with various interface styles with different designed icons. Icon, as an important competent of user interface, is regarded to be more efficient and pleasurable. However, compared with desktop computers, fewer design principles on smartphone icon were proposed. This paper investigated the effects of icon background shape and the figure/background area ratio on visual search performance and user preference. Icon figures combined with six different geometric background shapes and five different figure/background area ratios were studied on three different screens in experiments with 40 subjects. The results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that these two independent variables (background shape and figure/background area ratio) significantly affected the visual search performance and user preference. On 3.5-in (1 in=0.025 4 m) and 4.0-in displays, unified backgroundwould be optimal, shapes such as square, circle and transitions between them (e.g., rounded square, squircle, etc.) are recommended because backgrounds in these shapes yield a better search time performance and subjective satisfaction for ease of use, search and visual preference. A 60% figure/background area ratio is the most appropriate for smartphone icon design on the 3.5-in screen, while a 50% area ratio could be a suggestion for both relatively optimized search performance and user preference on 4.0-in. In terms of the 4.7-in, icon figure is used directly for its better performance and preference compared with icons with background.     

EvIcon: Designing High-Usability Icon with Human-in-the-loop Exploration and IconCLIP

Interface icons are prevalent in various digital applications. Due to limited time and budgets, many designers rely on informal evaluation, which often results in poor usability icons. In this paper, we propose a unique human-in-the-loop framework that allows our target users, that is novice and professional user interface (UI) designers, to improve the usability of interface icons efficiently. We formulate several usability criteria into a perceptual usability function and enable users to iteratively revise an icon set with an interactive design tool, EvIcon. We take a large-scale pre-trained joint image-text embedding (CLIP) and fine-tune it to embed icon visuals with icon tags in the same embedding space (IconCLIP). During the revision process, our design tool provides two types of instant perceptual usability feedback. First, we provide perceptual usability feedback modelled by deep learning models trained on IconCLIP embeddings and crowdsourced perceptual ratings. Second, we use the embedding space of IconCLIP to assist users in improving icons' visual distinguishability among icons within the user-prepared icon set. To provide the perceptual prediction, we compiled IconCEPT10K, the first large-scale dataset of perceptual usability ratings over 10,000 interface icons, by conducting a crowdsourcing study. We demonstrated that our framework could benefit UI designers' interface icon revision process with a wide range of professional experience. Moreover, the interface icons designed using our framework achieved better semantic distance and familiarity, verified by an additional online user study.     

Impact of spatial auditory feedback on the efficiency of iconic human–computer interfaces under conditions of visual impairment

This paper investigates the addition of spatial auditory feedback as a tool to assist people with visual impairments in the use of computers, specifically in tasks involving iconic visual search. In this augmented interface, unique sounds were mapped to visual icons on the screen. As the screen cursor traversed the screen, the user heard sounds of nearby icons, spatially, according to the relative position of each icon with respect to the screen cursor. A software prototype of the design was developed to evaluate the performance of users in the search of icons within the proposed interface. Experiments were conducted with simulated visual impairments on volunteer participants to evaluate if the addition of spatial auditory feedback makes the interface more accessible to users with impaired vision. Results demonstrated that spatialization of icon sounds provides additional remote navigational information to users, enabling new strategies for task completion. Directions for future research are discussed and prioritized.     

Subjective quantification of perceptual interactions among some 2D scientific visualization methods

We present an evaluation of a parameterized set of 2D icon-based visualization methods where we quantified how perceptual interactions among visual elements affect effective data exploration. During the experiment, subjects quantified three different design factors for each method: the spatial resolution it could represent, the number of data values it could display at each point, and the degree to which it is visually linear. The class of visualization methods includes Poisson-disk distributed icons where icon size, icon spacing, and icon brightness can be set to a constant or coupled to data values from a 2D scalar field. By only coupling one of those visual components to data, we measured filtering interference for all three design factors. Filtering interference characterizes how different levels of the constant visual elements affect the evaluation of the data-coupled element. Our novel experimental methodology allowed us to generalize this perceptual information, gathered using ad-hoc artificial datasets, onto quantitative rules for visualizing real scientific datasets. This work also provides a framework for evaluating visualizations of multi-valued data that incorporate additional visual cues, such as icon orientation or color.     

From action icon to knowledge icon: Objective-oriented icon taxonomy in computer science

Icon plays a critical role in computer interface design. Studies on icon taxonomy explain the way in which various types of icon represent the objects and provide designers creation rules by which icons are more in line with users’ cognitive psychology. However, along with larger and larger use of icons, the previous classification criterion causes the boundary between categories blur. What’s more, Single classification standard is not able to well illustrate the icons applied in today’s computer applications. The purpose of this paper is to present an objective-oriented icon taxonomy which proposes to categorize icons into action icon and knowledge icon. To assess this proposition, we analyzed a sample of icons that applied in computer interface and suggest precise application domains to both action icon and knowledge icon categories. The results of this practice manifested that action icon and knowledge icon implied a high relation with applied environment and explicated the development trace of computer icons. This work is one of the first to point out the notion of knowledge icon and to highlight the importance of objective of icon application. Findings in this paper could enrich icon use in computer interface design, especially provides possible way to improve online knowledge sharing by visual tool like icon.     

How do app icon color and border shape influence visual search efficiency and user experience? Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Icon color and icon border shape are two key factors that affect search efficiency and user experience but have previously been studied separately. This study aimed to ascertain their separate and combined effects on smartphone interfaces. We conducted an experiment using eye tracking in addition to performance and experience measures to understand the effects of app icon color and border shape on visual efficiency and user experience. The results identified both features as essential attributes with interactive effects in the process of searching app icons on a smartphone interface. The study confirmed that varied colors across icons and a rounded square border shape helped to improve search efficiency, decrease cognitive effort, and lead to a more positive user experience.Relevance to industryUsers of smartphones are often confronted with the problem of selecting a single app from a great number of apps. Visual design of app icons plays a key role in influencing visual search efficiency and user experience. The results of this study have implications for designing app icons on the interface of smartphones to improve search efficiency and elicit positive user experience.     

Interacting with VDL-based structured icons on crisis map for emergency coordination: Interactive design and experimental demonstration

Accurate and timely information sharing among multiple participants is one of the crucial factors for collaboration in crisis management. The icon-based map was frequently applied as an effective means for crisis interaction and collaboration. However, former studies only regarded the icons as supplementary visualization components during the whole crisis collaboration process. In this paper, the concept of a structured-icon-relied interactive method was proposed to directly integrate all kinds of crisis and coordination information through icons on the crisis map. Moreover, structured icons are supposed to explicitly show the correlation among crisis information and to improve the interactive experience of information search. The effectiveness of this interactive method was verified by a controlled experiment with three sub-tasks for simulated crisis rescue. The results of the experiment showed that the design of the crisis map based on structured icons had a positive impact on collaborative decision-making and crisis interaction. The dynamic characteristics of the structured icon could represent the temporal and spatial attributes of crisis information and enhance users’ crisis coordination ability. The study aims to enrich the theory of crisis information visualization and interaction based on structured iconic representation. In practice, this research could optimize the design of a crisis collaboration system based on the icon as well as the interaction between people, crisis information, and collaborative system, which in turn provides accurate and timely rescue decisions.