Development of Camera Symbols for Consumers

The objective of this work was to develop a prioritized and tested set of symbols for consumer cameras and to recommend for use to the American National Standards Institute. The work was carried out in two phases, message indentification and symbol construction. In the first phase, potential needs for 81 symbols for use on current and anticipated future cameras were Identified. The verbal content of the symbol messages was organized into functional groups arranged around roots. Those were prioritized according to frequency of need and importance of knowing, resulting in 15 symbols to construct. In the symbol construction phase, concepts for pictorial representations were obtained from a previous study, from modifying existing symbols and by brainstorming. A goal was to produce at least two symbol candidates per each message for testing. Test subjects' critiques of camera symbols in a previous study were applied to the content and design.