1. Public information symbols : a comparison of ISO testing prcedures Author: Christof Brugger Repot: Yang Kun, Ou

2. Introduction Technical committee 145 of the ISO has been working on improving the introduction of comprehensible public information sybmols since the beginning of the 1970s (ISO 致力改善 )

3. Introduction Responses from subsequent comprehension /recognition testing in four or more countries are categorized by three independently working judges using the seven categories

4. Response categories for the evaluation Category Criterion –1 Correct understanding of the symbol is certain –2 Correct understand of the symbol is likely –3 Correct understand of the symbol is marginally likely –4 The response is opposite to the intended meaning –5 The response is wrong –6 The response given is Don’t Know –7 No response is given

5. Appropriateness ranking test Respondents –50 位受測者 (28 male, 22 female) –15-78 years (M=34) –The experiments were collected data in the Vienna, Austria

6. Method Stimuli –symbol were used stimuli for figure 1 –Displayed in black and white on an A7-sized card –In center position with a size of 30mmx30mm

7. Figure 1: Test symbols

8. Procedure A respondent had to rank, successively of the symbol The respondent was asked to read the information card Spread all the test cards on a table, and to rank-order the variants according to their appropriateness for the particular referent

9. Scoring The median ranking positions in accordance with ISO 9186 were determined for each symbol The median values for each referent were transformed into normalized values (100 is best, and 0 is worst)

10. Appropriateness class assignment test Respondents –67 位受測者 (34 men, and 33 women) –Average age was 32 years Stimuli – 與實驗一相同

11. Procedure As in the appropriateness ranking test all cards for one referent were handed over in a stack with the information card on top ( 疊在手上一張一張問 ) Respondent one of three classes of appropriateness –Highly appropriate –Slightly appropriate –Not appropriate

12. Scoring According to the proposed method, the frequency of class 1 assignments of a variant (highly appropriate) was used as a measure of its appropriateness

13. Comprehensibility estimation Respondents –51 位受測者 (22 man, and 29 women) –Average age was 33 years Stimuli –Referent was 30mmx30mm in black and white, arranged in a circle on an A4-sized page

14. Procedure The respondents were instructed to read the information in the centre of each page Write next to each symbol and estimation of the percentage of the Austrian population that, in their opinion, would understand its meaning Scoring –The mean estimation score was computed for each symbol

15. Comprehension text Respondents –311 位受測者 (198 man, and 113 women) Stimuli –Size of 30mmx30mm were made on A7-sized pages –One symbol per page –First page used for registering age and sex –Second page was instruction sheet –Third page showed an example

16. Procedure Write below each symbol his or her interpretation of the meaning No information about context Respondent never had to give the meaning for more than one symbol variant for a specific referent

17. scoring As specified by ISO 9186 each answer was assigned to one of seven possible categories by three independently working judges In the cases where the judges did not agree on one single category, the category assigned by the majority of the judges was chosen

18. scoring The comprehension score is derived from the percentages of responses in categories 1 to 3

19. Results and discussion Use Friedman tests and subseqently to Wilcoxon signed-rank tests Significant differences were found within all sets (P<0.01) The relation between the two rating tasks and the ranking task be colser (r=0.82) than the relation between the rating tasks and the ranking task (r=0.49, 0.70)

20. Results and discussion Correlations of the rating scores with comprehension scores were highly significant with r=0.51 for appropriateness class assignment means and r=0.76 for comprehensibility estimation

21. Conclusions ISO has therefore decided that this test will not be a part of the future standard testing procedure and to use the comprehensibility estimation test instead