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From: matt@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Matthew McGranaghan)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Keywords: interfaces, icons, cross-linguistic issues, Spanish
Message-ID: <4560@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 13 Aug 89 21:37:52 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Reply-To: matt@uhccux.UUCP (Matthew McGranaghan)
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 35

In article <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> "CROSS-LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF ICONS",
dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) points out an interesting feature of icons.
Not only must the graphic be recognizable, distinguishable and memorable -
it must use an analogy with which the user can connect.  The example of
temperature and spicy-ness being related in English through the common 
word "hot" is a good one.
 In designing an icon for the geographic information system (GIS) function
often called "spread" several strategies could be taken, each using
a different analogy.  The icon could represent the end product of the function
pictorially.  In a simple form, the function returns the distance of all cells
in a raster from some set of specified cells - like the distances of all
points to the nearest road.  One representation might be an isoline map of
distances from a road.  Another slightly different approach might be more
process oriented(reinforciing the functional nature of spread) and show
essentially two images; one the original road and (in cultures which read left
to right) to the right an image of the isoline map.  These icons each use
the nature of the function to build the analogy.  A lingisticlly based 
approach could be so abstract as to use the word "spread" to represent the
function (or an "S").  Alternatively, and still linguistic at root, one might
show a jar of peanut butter (or Cheez-Wiz, or whatever) and a knife SPREADing
a dollop of the stuff on a piece of bread or a cracker.  
 The later may make a very recognizable symbol just for its being different,
but its utiliity seems to depend on people being familiar with the term
'spread" having two meanings.  
 It also seems that there would be an advantage to those liguistic analogies
which depend on basic level terms, if only out of accessibility.

Reactions?


-- 
matt@uhccux                         Matt McGranaghan, Geography Dept 
matt@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu              U of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way
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