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.