Human Factors Principles Underlying Glyph Design: A Review of the Literature and an Agenda for Future Research

摘要

Glyphs are graphical icons that depict multivariate data and are used by a number of disparate fields. Their designsare varied, reflecting both the diversity of applications and the absence of design standards. In the absence ofguidelines, glyph designers have relied on their intuition and expert opinion to develop a diverse collection ofidiosyncratic techniques for representing complex data sets. Importantly, it is not clear whether glyph designschemes are in any way optimal for efficient perceptual interpretation and usage. We note several findings in theperception and cognition literature that may serve as an initial basis for guidelines, we discuss how they might beused and the importance of doing so. Additionally, the dynamic updating of information in glyphs is a new trend thatmakes this kind of optimization necessary now more than has been in the past.