Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand.

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Abstract—The purpose of this study was to examine icon design for retirees, focusing on icon concreteness. The study was undertaken because although older adults are increasingly likely to use computers, the Internet, and portable computing devices like smartphones and tablets, they still face usability challenges including cognitive and skill barriers. Previous research has shown that concrete icons increase selection accuracy for inexperienced users. This research was an experiment (n = 30), in which users were asked to identify concrete and abstract icons. Chi-square analysis did not show a significant difference in selection accuracy of abstract and concrete icons in an unprompted trial (2 = 1.493, df = 5, p = .914) or a text-prompted trial (2 = .715, df = 3, p = .870). However, results were significantly better for the prompted trial. The implication is that abstract and concrete icons are equally difficult for senior adults to recognize.

Index Terms—Icon concreteness, text describe, retirees, accuracy.

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Cite: Kleddao Satcharoen, "The Investigation of Icon Concreteness with and without Text Describe for Retirees," Journal of Computers vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 119-124, 2019.