Participatory Environmentally Friendly Message Design: Influence of Message Features and User Characteristics.

Labels and declarations are one of the tools of environmental management aimed at improving human behavior with regard to the environment. The development process of environmental labels and declarations has been strongly recommended to include participatory consultation with users. Research studies on participatory design of environmentally friendly messages, however, have never been seen.

Color associations among designers and non-designers for common warning and operation concepts.

This study examined color-concept associations among designers and non-designers with commonly used warning and operation concepts. This study required 199 designers and 175 non-designers to indicate their choice among nine colors to associate with each of the 38 concepts in a color-concept table. The results showed that the designers and non-designers had the same color associations and similar strengths of stereotypes for 17 concepts.

Comprehension by older people of medication information with or without supplementary pharmaceutical pictograms.

This study examined the benefits of pharmaceutical pictograms for improving comprehension of medication information for older people. Fifty Hong Kong Chinese older people completed a medical information comprehension task for five drugs. Participants in the control group were presented with text labels while those in the experimental group were given the text labels plus supplementary pharmaceutical pictograms, and then all reported their understanding of the medication information conveyed.

Subjective measures in sit-to-stand task in post-stroke hemiparesis: comment on Brière, Nadeau, Lauzière, and Gravel (2013).

In a recent study, Brière, Nadeau, Lauzière, and Gravel (2013 ) examined the perceptions of individuals post-stroke on their weight-bearing distribution and knee effort distribution in sit-to-stand tasks. The present comment emphasized the importance of the feeling of post-stroke hemiparesis in sit-to-stand task and identified areas of improvements of the target study.

Effects of line length, line spacing, and line number on proofreading performance and scrolling of Chinese text.

Objective: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects and interactions of line length, line number, and line spacing on Chinese screen-based proofreading performance and amount of scrolling.

Background: Proofreading is an important process, and much of it is now done on screen. The Chinese language is increasingly important, but very little work has been done on the factors that affect proofreading performance for Chinese passages.

Effects of display factors on Chinese proofreading performance and preferences.

This experiment investigated the influence of four display factors, viz. typeface (Ming Liu and Jheng Hei), font size (10-point and 14-point), text direction (horizontal and vertical) and copy placement (left-right and top-bottom) on Chinese proofreading performance and subjective preferences. Proofreading performance was measured in terms of time and accuracy, and preferences were examined in terms of comfort, ease and fatigue.

The guessing of mine safety signs meaning: effects of user factors and cognitive sign features.

This study investigated the effects of user factors and cognitive sign features on the guessability of mine safety signs. Sixty naïve participants guessed the meanings and rated the cognitive sign features of 42 Mainland Chinese mine safety signs. The results showed that some user factors were significant predictors of guessing performance, while some were not.

Perspectives toward the stereotype production method for public symbol design: a case study of novice designers.

This study investigated the practices and attitudes of novice designers toward user involvement in public symbol design at the conceptual design stage, i.e. the stereotype production method.

Investigation of the effectiveness of traffic sign training in terms of training methods and sign characteristics.

Objective: This research investigated whether different training methods had any effect on the effectiveness of traffic sign training and whether there were any relationships between traffic sign characteristics and effectiveness of the training.

Methods: Thirty-six participants were randomly assigned into 4 equal-sized groups (control, paired-associate learning, recall training, and recognition training) to study the learnability of Mainland China traffic signs. In paired-associate learning, participants studied each traffic sign along with a referent describing its meaning.

The effects of user factors and symbol referents on public symbol design using the stereotype production method.

This study investigated the influence of user factors and symbol referents on public symbol design among older people, using the stereotype production method for collecting user ideas during the symbol design process. Thirty-one older adults were asked to draw images based on 28 public symbol referents and to indicate their familiarity with and ease with which they visualised each referent. Differences were found between the pictorial solutions generated by males and females.

Effects of sign characteristics and training methods on safety sign training effectiveness.

This study investigated whether or not training methods affected the effectiveness of symbol training and if there were any relationships between sign symbol characteristics and training effectiveness. Altogether, 26 Mainland China industrial safety signs were used and 60 participants were randomly assigned into four equal-sized groups of control, paired-associate learning, recall training and recognition training. The result was that participants from all the training groups showed significantly greater improvement in comprehension performance than those in the control group, indicating that the training methods improved comprehension of the meaning of safety signs.

The effects of driver factors and sign design features on the comprehensibility of traffic signs.

Problem: This paper addresses the effects of driver factors and sign design features on the comprehensibility of traffic signs.

Methods: A survey was designed to capture subjects' personal particulars, ratings on sign features, and comprehension scores, and then administered to 109 Hong Kong full driving license holders.

Results: Years with driving license and education level were significant predictors of sign comprehensibility.

Lateral foot-movement times in sitting and standing postures.

This study examined the effects of foot-side, sex, movement amplitude, and target width on lateral and nonvisually controlled foot-movement time with a reciprocal foot-tapping task in sitting and standing postures. 9 male and 9 female right-foot dominant undergraduates (ages 20 to 25 years) with no reported physical and health problems with their lower limbs voluntarily participated. Analysis indicated foot-movement time in a standing posture was much faster than that in a sitting posture.

The guessability of traffic signs: effects of prospective-user factors and sign design features.

This experiment investigated the relationships between the characteristics of prospective-users of traffic signs (people who will use the signs in the future) and the guessability of traffic signs, and also examined the effects of sign design features on the guessability of traffic signs. Forty-one Hong Kong Chinese subjects guessed the meanings and rated the sign features of 120 Mainland Chinese signs. Contrary to expectation, cycling experience and previous experience with sign information had no effect on sign guessing.