Babylon

User study on User-selected Icons for Tangible Handheld Devices

  • 22 May 2024
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  • 3 min read

[ Blog Under Construction … ]

This is the sequel study of my thesis, which was planned to be the fourth part. Although due to time and I wanted to have a narrower focus in my thesis, I skipped the Icons Stage.

1. Background

Human always needed and used some sort of iconography or acronyms for the machine interfaces. It can be massive “machines” like submarine, space shuttle or cars to small and simple ones we have in our home like a microwave oven or radio.

I have been taking photos of hundreds of those machine on dozens of countries I visited for years.

On small machine that we can carry in our pockets are called handheld devices, which aren’t have that much widely use few decades ago, compared to the other machines, in the past we may only have remote controls.

2. User Study: Button Labeling

In my study, the participants were first asked to take from a lottery jar a paper; on the paper will be one of the six alphabets I previously selected.

Afterwards, the participants will be asked to use the characters of that alphabet to label the function of the

3. Possible Contributions

  1. Insights for designing Smart home controllers
  2. Iconography for future Controllers

Our main aim is to gather knowledge on which icons are more suitable on certain functions, here we will be focusing on functions that appears on home appliances, and will be shown on buttons in a remote control which controls those home appliances.

4. Research Methodology: Icons Selection

Matuda’s book “ZERRO” (2021)[^1] offers an extensive collection of alphabets and icons from various global contexts, including professional, religious, medical, mathematical, and pseudo-scientific domains. This diverse compilation served as a significant source of inspiration, guiding me in the exploration and selection icons suitable for my user experiment. To ensure a systematic selection process, several guidelines were followed.

Icons or letters chosen should be unfamiliar to users, avoiding commonly recognized symbols such as the three-line hamburger menu and frequently used numbers to minimize potential bias. Complexity was a key consideration, with a preference for icons that are not overly complex or intricate and can be effectively rendered in small sizes. Furthermore, most of them need to have the same proportions, and tend to choose more square proportioned alphabets.

The alphabets I’ve chosen each contain a wide range of letters, providing a good mix of options, ensuring there’s plenty of variety while still keeping it simple for participants to make their selections without feeling overwhelmed. Consistency in proportions was another important criterion, with a preference for icons that maintain uniformity in size and shape, preferably square or square-proportioned when inclined. These guidelines facilitated a methodical evaluation and selection process, leading to the identification of icons best suited for the intended experimental purposes.

5. The Alphabets

Six alphabets were chosen for the task. Grouped into two groups, one with four and the other with two alphabets. Each of the four alphabets will be presented to half of the participants, while two alphabets will be presented in alphabetical order to all the participants. The latter two have been presented in a different order to each participant using the Latin Square, have only eight letters, matching the number of the Interaction Elements of the Tangible User Remote Interface.

ex

I listed the following four rules that the alphabet should have:

  1. The alphabet should be an alphabet which the participant hasn’t used before, in order to lower the possible bias.
  2. The alphabet letters should not be too complex, so as to be easy to visually identify on tiny buttons.
  3. The alphabet should have a comprehensive number, a wide variety of shapes of letters for the participant to choose.
  4. The alphabet should be a more symmetric and square-proportioned one, to fit well in a button.

Mu Alphabet

Actually, this alphabet is linked to a lost continent called Mu, started with a translation mistake in 1864. A French scholar misread two Maya symbols as “M” and “U,” combined them, and decided a sunken landmass called Mu must exist.

In the decades that followed, pseudoscientific writers turned this error into a popular myth, claiming Mu was a vast Pacific continent, similar to Atlantis in the Atlantis. Even claiming as the birthplace of all human civilization and discussed that islands like Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii were surviving mountaintops from this lost world.

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Mu, the Mythical Lost Continent

In reality, modern historians, linguists, and geologists have long confirmed that both the sunken continent and its mysterious geometric alphabet were created entirely from flawed translations and non-scientific research.

Bopomofo

Bopomofo is a 37-letters alphabet mostly squared-shaped, minimal-traced, quite suitable for icons on buttons. This is a phonetic alphabet created in the early of the twentieth century for learning the complicated Chinese characters, to boost literacy, nowadays is mainly used in to teach taiwanese kids Chinese characters.

ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈ ㄉ ㄊ ㄋ ㄌ ㄍ ㄎ ㄏ ㄐ ㄑ
ㄒ ㄓ ㄔ ㄕ ㄖ ㄗ ㄘ ㄙ ㄚ ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ㄞ
ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄦ ㄧ ㄨ ㄩ

Hobo Signs

Hobo signs where used by migrant and homeless people in Europe and the US since the beginning of the 19th century. Used to communicate information about train schedules, directions, and other useful local information.

Toyokuni Script

It comes from Japan, known as Toyokuni Moji (豊国文字), is the theoretical “scripts of the Age of the Gods” claimed to exist in Japan before the adoption of Chinese characters (Kanji). Some of its caracters resemble to objects, animals and other natural phenomena, while others are more abstract. It has 50 characters the same as the modern Japanese alphabet.

Map Symbols

These were symbols used for maps, originated in Catalonia. Used for regional cartography, geographic marking and local place names. One of the famous maps using it is the Catalan Atlas.

Numibia

Tifinagh is a script used for Berber languages. Still used in many countries in the Sahara.

ⴰ 	ⴱ 	ⴲ 	ⴳ 	ⴴ 	ⴵ 	ⴶ 	ⴷ 	ⴸ 	
ⴹ 	ⴺ 	ⴻ 	ⴼ 	ⴽ 	ⴾ 	ⴿ 	ⵀ 	ⵁ
ⵂ 	ⵃ 	ⵄ 	ⵅ 	ⵆ 	ⵇ 	ⵈ 	ⵉ 	ⵊ 
ⵋ 	ⵌ 	ⵍ 	ⵎ 	ⵏ 	ⵐ 	ⵑ 	ⵒ 	ⵓ 
ⵔ 	ⵕ 	ⵖ 	ⵗ 	ⵘ 	ⵙ 	ⵚ 	ⵛ 	ⵜ
ⵝ 	ⵞ 	ⵟ 	ⵠ 	ⵡ 	ⵢ 	ⵣ 	ⵤ 	ⵥ
ⵦ 	ⵧ 	ⵯ 	⵰

6. Results

7. Conclusions

8. References

[1]: Matuda, Y. [松田行正]. (2021) ZERRO 零【初版紅．複刻珍藏版】：世界記號大全 (Traditional Chinese Edition). 漫遊者文化.