노인의 시지각 특성을 고려한 앱 아이콘 디자인 개발 방향 제안

Background : With the advent of smartphone market, lifestyle of users is rapidly changing through smartphone application service. It is expected that the number of elderly people using smartphone will grow as we entering into aging society. However, most of application icons are designed without considering their visual recognition and this may cause difficulties for elderly people going through deterioration in visual recognition in using application service. As this is the case, it is required to develop application icon design in reflection to their visual features. Methods : This research tries to identify standard for evaluating application icon specialized for visual recognition of elderly based on changes in visual recognition. 37 application icon samples are selected from 5 different categories of Google Play, which is used by elderly generation the most in smartphone application market in Korea. Then, a survey is conducted to those users. The deducted standards of evaluation reflecting their visual recognition include; discrimination, understandability, and attention. In consideration to this, this research tries to examine the most easily discriminated icon, icon with good implication of its function, and the most prominent colored icon. Result : Based on the user survey, this research tries to suggest ways to develop application icon design for elderly smartphone users by dividing the result by visual components; shape, color, and type. First of all, for application shape, elderly people found it easy to recognize if icon is in a shape of an object, action, or symbol that they are very much used to. Secondly, those icons with warm colors such as red and yellow tend to be recognized more. Thirdly, for icon types, it is better to use simple words that are easily understood by elderly people, ranging from 1 to 4 different types. Conclusion : Different from the previous studies that only focused on preference of elderly people on application icon design, this research tries to suggest ways to develop icon design which reflects their visual features so that they are more efficiently exchange information in this aging society with increasing number of elderly smartphone users.