Which-do-you-choose?

Icons and symbols permeate our everyday lives, from the buttons on kitchen electronics, to our phone applications, and in industrial settings. Icons mean to tell us something, portray some function. But how much do we really understand these icons, especially for individuals across cultural barriers? Very little is known about the effectiveness of most digital icons and symbols. Current icon design guidelines are built based on normative studies and performance scores obtained by a younger, mainly Western demographic. Use of culturally irrelevant or opaque icons comes not only with usability, but also ethical and moral issues of exclusion.

The Swansea Icons Norm Group (SING) brings together researchers from across the university (from Psychology, Humanities, and Computer Science) to improve our understanding surrounding the use of icons in our society.

Research findings about the effectiveness of icons are not used to inform design decisions. The existing guidelines and standards are not easily accessible online and are little used in practice by developers. Our research aims to influence how icons are designed and used for their intended target audience, breaking down the barriers of communication of icon design and usage between research and industry. There is a gap in communication and sharing of information, between developers and expert knowledge about the effectiveness of icons and symbols.

In brief, SING is a research group dedicated to the advancement of knowledge surrounding the language of Icons and their use in everyday life.


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