The Usability Research Of Flat Icons In The Interface Of Smart Phone

The flat design style has swept the field of digital interface in recent years, and it has also been widely used in the design of smart phone interface, as the main component of smart phone interface, flat icons take a important impact of function indication and information transmission, and its operating efficiency has been attracting the attention of designers and academic community continuously.Reviewing the research status, the current study on the issue of icon usability is deficient, and most of the research focuses on qualitative theoretical analysis which is short of quantitative study that can be used as reference, thus it has no clear conclusion about the actual usability of flat icons. In this study, the method was first time used to make in-depth research about the usability of flat icons which combines physiological data and psychological data.To ensure the objectivity and accuracy of this study, the use situation of flat icon has been investigated firstly to collect its design features which include the visual form, main elements, icon colours and sizes. On the basis of the investigation, the flat style icons and skeuomorphism style icons were collected and produced which would be used as experimental material in subsequent experiments, then designing eye tracking experiments to study the influence of icon size and colour complexity on user’s visual search efficiency. The mobile terminal eye tracker was used in this study to simulate user’s usage scenarios to maximum extent. After the experiments were finished, the subjects were arranged to filled out questionnaires and participate in interview to acquire the perceptual evaluation and satisfaction feedback information.The study results show that user’s visual search efficiency is relevant to the icon’s size and colour complexity. From the perspective of icon size, the search efficiency of skeuomorphism icons is higher than flat icons in large size, and when the icon size is medium and small, the search efficiency of flat icons is higher than skeuomorphism icons. From the perspective of icon’s colour complexity, the search efficiency of simple concolorous icon is superior to complex multicolor icon in flat style; and the search efficiency of flat icons in medium size is higher than the ones whose size is smaller and larger. Then from the perspective of user’s evaluation, the simple concolorous icon is superior in simplicity, remembering easiness andsuitability for smart phone interface, and the complex multicolor icon has higher aesthetic measure and user’s likeability.This study supplement the theoretical research of flat icons in the interface of smart phone, and providing a reference for the design of smart phone icon at the same time.