<p>MEASUREING VISUAL SEARCH REACTION TIME AND ACCURACY FOR A PRODUCT LABELWARNING AS A FUNCTION OF ICON, COLOR, COLUMN, AND VERTICAL PLACEMENT<p>SWINDELL, JULIE ANN <p>Abstract<br> There is a large body of work written on how to design effectivewarnings. Within an information-processing perspective, before a warning can be heeded it must be noticed,read, understood, retained, retrieved at the appropriate time, and acted upon. If a warning is not noticed (thefirst step in the process), the linear sequence is broken and compliance behavior is much less likely to result.This study examined factors that might facilitate the noticeability of a warning in a simulated product label. Thefactors examined were icon, signal word color and placement. The experiment examined a 5 icon x 3 color x 2column x 3 placement design. Participants were to decide which of two warnings was present in a given labeland reaction time was measured. Afterwards, participants were asked to order the 16 label conditions fromthe most- to least-noticeable warnings. The results showed icon/signal word pairs presented in red or bluewere found significantly faster than those presented in black although red was not significantly greater thanblue. All icon conditions showed significantly faster reaction times than when the icon was absent, althoughthere were differences found between the icon conditions. Warnings in the left column were found significantlyfaster than those in the right column. Those warnings located at the top of the column were significantly fasterthan those located in the middle or at the bottom of a column, although no significant difference was foundbetween the latter two locations. The addition of color or icon overrode any effects of column or placement.The results of this study suggest that minor changes to a fairly extensive warning label such as the addition of anicon or color, could greatly improve warning noticeability. <P>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-19990331-084420 |
| Date | 31 March 1999 |
| Creators | Swindell, Julie Ann |
| Contributors | Michael S. Wogalter, Donald Mershon, David W. Martin |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-19990331-084420 |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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