ABSTRACT
Graphical icons are a standard feature of most graphical user interfaces (GUIs),
representing a range of commands and objects. Usage of icons is, if anything, on the rise
as small, low-resolution displays (e.g. mobile phones, PDAs), which make display of
large amounts of text difficult, proliferate. Unfortunately, there is strikingly little
empirical and theoretical work on how users interact with icons. A clearer understanding
of the ways in which users search iconic displays could be of great value to designers of
such interfaces, possibly allowing the display of more information in less space. The
studies in this paper are aimed at examining the visual search processes employed by
users as they search displays of labeled icons, a task we call icon search.