The usability of symbols for health care facilities: the effects of culture gender and age Author: Wendy T. Olmstaead Reporter: Yang Kun, Ou

Introduction A variety of public information symbols have been developed to support wayfinding in hospitals and health care facilities The signs should present a message clearly

Reference Incorrectly interpreted signs can cause disorientation, frustration and stress A wide variety of mostly pictorial symbols for similar or identical referents have been designed and are in use on hospital signs throughout the world (e.g. Dreyfuss,1975)

Reference Zwaga’s validation results show that a symbols with an estimation score of 87% will meet the acceptance criterion in the ISO comprehension test of 66% correct interpretations

Method The set of symbols used in this study consisted of a selection of 41 symbols for seven referents used on hospital signs (five to six symbols per referent)

Method

The data were analysed in four ways to answer the following question –Which of the 41 symbols are acceptable for users of health care facilities, have a median comprehensibility estimate of 87% or higher? –Is there a gender effect? –Is there an age effect? –Are there differences between the estimates of the two samples?

Subjects

Results of the American sample The data show that 11 of the 41 symbols can be accepted as sufficiently meaningful The median estimate is 87% or higher

Results of the American sample

Method

Results of the American sample There is a clear gender difference in the results –Males rated only four of the symbols acceptable and females 14 (χ 2 =5.76, P<0.02) There is a significant effect of age on the estimation scores of the symbols (χ 2 =5.93, P<0.05)

Results of the American sample The senior group (65 and older) and the middle group (25-64) clearly differ –The number of acceptable symbols is respectively 4 and 13 Perhaps the youngest group (18-24) with nine acceptable symbols (worse than perhaps the middle group)

Results of the Chinese sample The data show that eight of the 41 symbols reach the acceptance ceiterion There are no acceptable symbols for two of the seven referents (Outpatient services, Waiting room)

Results of the Chinese sample

The gender is not significant There is no significant differences between the number of acceptable symbols for each of the three age groups (χ 2 =1.71)

Comparing the two smaples There are five referents meet the acceptance criterion in both samples There is no significant difference between the samples with regard to the effects of gender and age

Conclusions Considering the different cultures, that only five of the 41 symbols evaluated meet the acceptance criterion The symbols are less well suited for the elderly than for younger age groups

Conclusions Visit hospitals as primary caretakers of children and the elderly Evaluation of proposed public information symbols is clearly necessary