Attempt to develop analysis model of reader’s pictogram understanding process

Abstract

When designing pictograms, a pictogram designer decides the meaning intended to be conveyed by a pictogram. It is desirable that the reader understands the meaning of the pictogram as intended by the designer. However, there are readers who understand a pictogram very differently from the designer's intention. Due to this difference between the designer’s intention and these readers’ understanding, the pictogram communicates the wrong message to the readers. This difference should be minimized.We attempted to develop a model to analyze a reader’s pictogram comprehension process. Analyzing the reader's pictogram comprehension process will contribute to clarifying the causes of differences between readers’ understanding and designers’ intentions. The proposed model does not simulate the cognitive processes of the reader. Instead, it logically analyses the process from the pictogram that a reader reads as input to the phrases representing the pictogram described by the reader as output.First, we conducted an experiment in which subjects looked at pictograms and described what pictograms they saw. We collected pictogram comprehension data through the experiment. Second, on the basis of the collected data, we developed a model that analyzed the process of understanding for the pictograms used in the experiment.The proposed model consists of three procedures:1)Breaking down the pictogram that a reader reads into its elements such as human beings and objects.2)Analyzing the relationship between each element.3)Analyzing the relationship between how a reader actually reads and understands a pictogram and the pictogram's grammatical relationship.We believe that the model is useful for estimating in detail why readers understand pictograms the way they do.