The usability of symbols for health care facilities: the effects

of culture gender and age

Author: Wendy T. Olmstaead

Reporter: Yang Kun, Ou

Introduction

• A variety of public information symbols have been developed to support wayfinding in hospitals and health care facilities

• The signs should present a message clearly

Reference

• Incorrectly interpreted signs can cause disorientation, frustration and stress

• A wide variety of mostly pictorial symbols for similar or identical referents have been designed and are in use on hospital signs throughout the world (e.g. Dreyfuss,1975)

Reference

• Zwaga’s validation results show that a symbols with an estimation score of 87% will meet the acceptance criterion in the ISO comprehension test of 66% correct interpretations

Method

• The set of symbols used in this study consisted of a selection of 41 symbols for seven referents used on hospital signs

(five to six symbols per referent)

Method

Method

• The data were analysed in four ways to answer the following question– Which of the 41 symbols are acceptable f

or users of health care facilities, have a median comprehensibility estimate of 87% or higher?

– Is there a gender effect?– Is there an age effect?– Are there differences between the estima

tes of the two samples?

Subjects

Results of the American sample

• The data show that 11 of the 41 symbols can be accepted as sufficiently meaningful

• The median estimate is 87% or higher

Results of the American sample

Method

Results of the American sample

• There is a clear gender difference in the results– Males rated only four of the symbols

acceptable and females 14 (χ2=5.76, P<0.02)

• There is a significant effect of age on the estimation scores of the symbols (χ2=5.93, P<0.05)

Results of the American sample

• The senior group (65 and older) and the middle group (25-64) clearly differ– The number of acceptable symbols is

respectively 4 and 13

• Perhaps the youngest group (18-24) with nine acceptable symbols (worse than perhaps the middle group)

Results of the Chinese sample

• The data show that eight of the 41 symbols reach the acceptance ceiterion

• There are no acceptable symbols for two of the seven referents (Outpatient services, Waiting room)

Results of the Chinese sample

Results of the Chinese sample

• The gender is not significant

• There is no significant differences between the number of acceptable symbols for each of the three age groups (χ2=1.71)

Comparing the two smaples

• There are five referents meet the acceptance criterion in both samples

• There is no significant difference between the samples with regard to the effects of gender and age

Conclusions

• Considering the different cultures, that only five of the 41 symbols evaluated meet the acceptance criterion

• The symbols are less well suited for the elderly than for younger age groups

Conclusions

• Visit hospitals as primary caretakers of children and the elderly

• Evaluation of proposed public information symbols is clearly necessary