Research On The Influencing Factors Of Visual Search Performance Of Skeuomorphism And Flat Style Icons

With the rapid development of the internet industry,the functions of computers,mobile phones and other devices are becoming more and more abundant and diversified.At the same time,because the graphical interface design basically uses icons to point to different functional software,the accumulation of a large number of functional icons in a limited device interface space also brings an increase in the difficulty of icon search.Therefore,studying the factors that affect the performance of icon search,so as to design the icon interface in a targeted manner and improve the efficiency of icon search has become a research hotpots in the field of human-computer interaction.This research aims at the controversial problem that the results of previous studies may be due to the lack of strict control of the icon shape,color,and reference meanings,which causes the skeuomorphism and flat icon style to affect icon search performance.The laboratory experiment method and the use of eye tracker and other experimental equipment were used to study the effects of skeuomorphism and flat icon style and target template format,delay time,and chromaticity factors on the visual search performance of icons and the eye movement search mechanismAiming at the problem that previous studies failed to strictly control the irrelevant variables of icon materials of different style,in this study,firstly,a set of experimental icon materials including skeuomorphism icons and their corresponding flat style icons were independently established through image processing tools.The icon complexity,familiarity,and semantic distance were evaluated and screened.The icon experiment material library that was more strictly controlled on irrelevant variables for subsequent experimental research was developed.Based on this,the following three experimental studies were carried out.Experiment 1 uses the target icon search task to study the icon search performance of two types of skeuomorphism and flat icons in two different target template format(text presentation,picture presentation);Experiment 2 uses the target icon search task to study the icon search performance of two types of skeuomorphism and flat icons in different search delay time.Experiment 3 uses the target icon search task to study the icon search performance of skeuomorphism flat style icons of different chromaticity(color and gray)The following conclusions are drawn based on the experimental results:(1)Under the target template format in both text and pictures,there is no difference in search performance between the skeuomorphism and flat icon style colored icons;The search performance of the two types of icon style colored icons in picture form is higher than that in text form.(2)Under different delay times,there is no difference in search performance between the skeuomorphism and flat icon style colored icons;The search performance of the two types of icon style colored icons under shorter delay time is higher than that under longer delay time.(3)When the icon is grayscale,the search performance of the flat style icon is higher than the skeuomorphism style icon;The search performance of the two types of colored icons is higher than the gray-scale form;The search performance change of the skeuomorphism style icon between the two chromaticity levels is higher than that of the flat style icon.The chromaticity factor of the icon plays a role as a moderating variable in the visual search performance of the quasi-materialized flat style icons.When the icon is grayscale,the search performance of the flat style icon is higher than that of the skeuomorphism style icon,and when the icon is color,the search performance difference between the skeuomorphism and flat style icons is not shown.When the icon is grayscale,the flat style icon design is recommended;meanwhile,the search performance of the two style icons in grayscale is lower than that in color.According to the results of this study,the following suggestions are made for the design of icon interfaces:(1)When designing a grayscale mobile phone or PC theme,from the perspective of use efficiency,priority should be given to designing icon elements in a flat design style compared to the skeuomorphism design style;(2)With the popularity of e-book readers,the use of grayscale system interfaces is becoming more and more frequent.It is recommended that the icons inside the system be given a flat design style in order to improve user operation efficiency and user experience;(3)In the design of the colorful graphical interface,from the perspective of search efficiency,the skeuomorphism and flat icon design style can be put on an equal footing.In real life,designers have been committed to improving the aesthetics and use of icons.This study provides theoretical basis and practical suggestions for the icon and graphic design work in human-computer interaction interfaces.