Experimental Study: The Effects of Mobile Phone Icons Characteristics on Users’ Age Groups

Mobile phone applications interfaces offer great support to various age group users. There is a lot of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (here after HCI) research work going on, which is found in User Experience – UX issues. Until now little research work is done on Mobile phone icons and its effect on learn ability for various age group users. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of mobile phone icons characteristics on users’ age groups. In current research work we carry out an exploratory study followed by an in-depth experimental based study in order to find out which icons characteristics effect icon usability for various age group users. From experimental results, it is revealed that elderly have more issues while interpreting mobile phone icons, but specifically icon characteristics-semantic distance, familiarity and complexity- are having potential in order to improve icon user experience. We further discuss how design guidelines can support application designers to design application icons that can be adopted by various age group users and be beneficial for them.