No abstract

No abstract

Emoticons are graphic signs illustrated with ASCII characters to accompany text-based computer-mediated communication (Dresner & Herring, 2010). The effects of using emoticons has begun to be investigated, but little effort has been put forth to determine how well people are able to interpret the meaning of emoticons. Preliminary data from the current research effort is reported to indicate how well 34 undergraduate students were able to correctly interpret 50 distinct emoticons from Yahoo Messenger. Results suggest that correct interpretation varied widely between emoticons, and the reported frequency of use was positively correlated with emoticon interpretability. Research and design implications are discussed, as well as questions for future research.

Although symbols or pictorials are increasingly being used to communicate warning information, people's comprehension of them is not guaranteed and sometimes can be quite low. The current study sought to determine whether adding colored highlighting to the relevant components of a pictorial benefits comprehension of the warning. There were three highlighting conditions: more relevant parts were highlighted, less relevant parts were highlighted, or no highlighting. Each participant was shown pictorials in each of the three highlighting conditions and asked to write a short description about what each pictorial communicates. The results showed that participants were more likely to correctly understand the intended conceptual meaning of pictorials when the most relevant parts were highlighted in comparison to the other two conditions. Highlighting less relevant parts led to poorer comprehension than no highlighting at all. Appropriately color highlighting relevant parts of complex pictorial symbols could be a useful method of enhancing comprehension.

No abstract