Cornell University Ergonomics Web

DEA325 Class: Symbol Creation Exercise

In this exercise, the class was given standard descriptions of objects or tasks and asked to represent them with a pictogram based on principles of good symbol design. The pictograms were presented to the class who were asked to guess what they represent. Lastly, the ISO standard symbol for each description was presented. In several cases the symbols created by the class were more easily recognizable by the class than the ISO symbols. The ISO symbols in some cases seemed to require learning an entirely new symbolic language. This is in conflict with the principle we learned that symbols should be as "explicit, unambiguous, and self-evident as possible".

See below for examples of symbols created by the class and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Description	Class symbol	ISO symbol
"count the layers"
"cylinder leak"
"neutral zone"
"rinse"