Research On Design Of Safety Signs Based On Ergonomic Principles

In recent years,China’s safety production situation has generally maintained a stable and positive trend,but the volume of production accidents is still very large,which seriously hinders the development of China’s economy.Therefore,how to reduce the incidence of production accidents is a problem worth discussing.Safety signs are widely used in various industrial production places and public places,which play an important role in accident prevention,danger warning and behavior guidance.They are called the last line of defense in the process of safety management,and their failure may directly lead to production accidents.Only when users fully understand the meaning of safety signs can they further make correct behaviors and avoid dangerous situations.Improving the comprehensibility of safety signs can help reduce the incidence of production safety accidents.However,there are few design studies on improving the comprehensibility of safety signs in China,so the main purpose of this study is to study and summarize the design process that can effectively improve the comprehensibility of safety signs in China,and use this design process to redesign safety signs.Finally,the effectiveness of this design process is verified by follow-up experiments.At first,this study conducted a signs’ comprehensibility test,studied the comprehensibility status of 103 safety signs in China’s current national standard and analyzed the influence of individual characteristics on signs’ comprehensibility.The results showed that46 of the 103 safety signs in China could not reach the 67% comprehension rates stipulated in ISO 3864-3,2012 and the education background and work experience would significantly affect the signs comprehension rates.At the same time,this study also carried out the evaluation test of safety signs’ ergonomic principles,and studied the correlation between safety signs’ comprehensibility and ergonomic principles.The results showed that conceptual compatibility,physical compatibility and familiarity all significantly affected signs’ comprehensibility,and conceptual compatibility had the greatest impact on signs’ comprehensibility.Guided by the ergonomics principles and Pierce Semiotics,and combined with the feedback from the subjects,this study sums up six major problems that lead to poor signs comprehension and corresponding design strategies,and puts forward a signs design process based on the ergonomics principles.According to this design process,42 signs whose comprehensibility is not up to standard are redesigned,and the redesigned signs are tested for comprehensibilty test,ergonomics principle evaluation and preference test.The results show that the comprehensibility and user preference of most new signs are significantly better than the original signs,which verifies the effectiveness of this design process.The results of this study can provide methodological reference for the design of safety signs,and at the same time provide valuable design reference for the next revision of safety signs in China,which is of practical significance to reduce the incidence of production accidents.