Under the background of the severe population aging in the world, the population aging in China has been a problem that must be faced by social development. Along with the increase of the elderly and geriatric hospitals, the geriatric hospitals and th...
Under the background of the severe population aging in the world, the population aging in China has been a problem that must be faced by social development. Along with the increase of the elderly and geriatric hospitals, the geriatric hospitals and the elderly have a higher and higher need for the signs that could be effectively and easily recognized. The sign system plays a key role in providing necessary information and correctly guiding spatial direction for elderly users. Especially, the elderly is hard to understand the complicated and giant sign information in the hospitals. However, the existing sign information is made for the ordinary people, which is mainly begun from the aspect of designers with the visual aesthetics of signs as centre. Thus, the geriatric hospitals are thirst for a set of sign systems to create a set of a sign system that would provide convenient and effective information acquisition with high perception for the elderly.
Through the previous studies related to sign information and the existing technical code for the sign system of public buildings in China and the survey on the current situation of hospital signs for the elderly in China, it is found the following problems.
Firstly, in the previous studies, most studies of sign design are for ordinary users. Fewer of them are involved with the signs of the elderly, but there is no concrete method for the sign design of the visual cognition for the elderly and the suggestions are also not systemic. In addition, the “technical code for sign system of public buildings in China” is also stipulated for the common users; the actual sign design in the hospital is hard to be implemented due to the unspecific data. There is no specific suggestion on the following problems, such as the standard of the types and forms of Chinese characters and their use in the signs for the elderly, the most appropriate Chinese character height according to the observation distance and the number of locations information most suitable for the visual perception of elderly users in each layer or direction of the guide board, all of these have no specific suggestions.
Secondly, based on the analysis of the field evaluation of 50 users in the 10 hospitals in the 4 representative cities, it is found that 76% of users still failed to effectively recognize the text elements, information amount, color and other information on the signboard. In addition, 89% of elderly users still need to ask the workers for routes.
Thirdly, sign information cognition is directly used in feeling organs, and it is a comprehensive response of the brain to the sign, which means the process that the human brain perceives, processes and reacts to the sign information. Hence, it is necessary to propose and study the user-oriented sign information cognition processing model based on the information processing theory in cognitive psychology. As seen from the implementation of the experimental method, The reaction time test method is deemed to be very important in the previous studies of cognitive effect, but there are fewer studies with the reaction time test method. The evaluation index adoption of the reaction time test method in the study of previous literature researches is unclear, so it is necessary to precisely extract the index of the reaction time test to have an experimental study.
Therefore, the study is to bring clear and effective cognitive effects for the elderly with the information design factor in Chinese geriatric hospitals, hoping to propose design factors for the sign information that meets the cognitive features of the elderly.
The main purposes of this study are summarized as follows:
Firstly, hope to extract the evaluation index of sign information design in geriatric hospitals that would affect the elderly’s cognition of sign information, so as to clarify the influence and correlation of the design index and the design factor of sign information on the cognitive effect.
In addition, by proposing an effective sign information design scheme that is suitable for geriatric hospitals and the elderly, it provides guidelines for the sign information design for Chinese geriatric hospitals in the future. It is hoped to provide evidence and basic data for the revision of the technical code for the sign system of public buildings in China.
The main contents and studies of the paper are shown as follows:
Chapter one is the background and objectives of the study, the study range and the methods. It points out the direction of differentiation research through the previous studies of signs.
Chapter two is the theoretical and literature study on the identification system of visual information transmission function and the information processing in cognitive psychology. In addition, the paper analyzes the cognition change of the elderly from physical and psychological aspects. Based on the information processing model of Robert Mills Gagne and Christopher D. Wickens, it concludes the cognition processing of sign information processing and suggests the sign information grading information of hospitals, which would provide evidence for the subsequently implemented experimental project elements and design guidelines.
Chapter three extracts the indexes of evaluation features of sign information design for the geriatric hospitals according to the A. I.G.A standard specifications, advance research and analysis and expert interviews. There is analsyis on the correlation and influencing relations on the extracted evaluation indexes and 7 design factors with Pearson Correlation and multiple regression analysis.
Chapter four has an investigation and analysis of the sign system for geriatric hospitals and comprehensive hospitals through field research. For the Chinese cases, the paper has an on-site investigation of 10 geriatric hospitals and comprehensive hospitals with more than 500 beds in 4 representative cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. There is a rating of experts on the cases with evaluation indexes. Consequently, it would provide evidence for the 7 design factors in the sign information design in the follow-up experiment on cognitive effect.
Chapter five confirms the 7 experiments of cognitive effects on the guiding and directional signs in geriatric hospitals through the above theory and literature review, current situation analysis. There is a sample production and visual cognitive effect experiment for each experiment. The experiment is undertaken with the SD method, reaction time measurement and characteristic evaluation to gain the mean and standard deviations. Then, there is a statistical analysis of the result with image evaluation analysis, factor evaluation method, and analysis of variance.
Chapter six is to have a comprehensive sample production according to the experiment results of cognitive effect in chapter five, Besides, there are verification surveys of the reaction time test and characteristic evaluation on the elderly with the sample and the existing sign sample. There is a comparison statistics analysis on the existing samples and proposed samples with reliability, KW-Test and MWU-Test to verify whether the results gained from the experiments are effective on the site. What’s more, the sign design guideline for the geriatric hospitals is suggested according to the conclusions mentioned above.
Chapter seven is the conclusion. It puts forward the effective data and the use guideline in the future suitable for the sign system for a geriatric hospital that meets the visual cognitive features of the elderly.
The following conclusions are gained from the studies above:
1. The indexes to evaluate the sign information design in geriatric hospitals should be unity, readability, clarity, attention and cognition. The indexes of the reaction time test of sign information should be accuracy and reaction time. The cognitive effect of the elderly on the visual information factors could be effectively measured through the indexes mentioned above.
2. The correlation relations between evaluation indexes and the design factors of sign information would be varied along with different design types. The nuances of each design would also produce great differences in user recognition.
3. The cognitive effect would be different if the accuracy and reaction time of the experiment result of the cognitive effect is various. In the design of the sign information, the higher the accuracy, the better the cognitive effect; on the contrary, it is important to keep the reaction time short.
4. To improve the cognitive effect, there should be coordinated design for the text type, text size, line spacing/word spacing, layout, information amount, a combination of text color and background color, and arrangement of text and arrows.
According to the evaluation indexes, the 7 design factors and guidelines for the sign information design for geriatric hospitals are as follows:
Firstly, there is a strong influencing relationship between the text type and the readability, clarity and cognition of guidance information. Hence, if the sign information design in geriatric hospitals is equipped with strong readability, clarity and high perception, it is suggested to think highly of the adoption of even thickness in the strokes of the font without cumbersome decorative strokes. The font shape should be concise and clear with a square structure, and it should be adopted with a text type that is wider than normal bold.
Secondly, the cognitive effect of information delivery would be different due to different accuracy and response time based on the sign information processing model. Thus, when it is within 2 meters of the observation distance with the priority of accuracy and reaction time, the information design factor should pay attention that the height of the Chinese character of the sign is 40mm and that of the directional sign is 50mm.
Thirdly, according to the result of the experiment, the optimal ratio of the height and the row spacing of the Chinese characters should be H:0.6H and that of the directional sign should be H:0.8H IN in the guiding sign. Besides, the optimal ratio of the height and the word spacing of Chinese characters should be H:0.4H and that of the directional sign should be H:0.4H.
Fourthly, there is a strong influencing relationship between typesetting and unity. Hence, the typesetting of similar guide text should be adopted with the align-left three columns with the best visual cognitive effect. When the information content delivery is united, the elderly could quickly judge where to acquire the information at the same time through the consistent and uniform information layout.
Fifthly, there is a strong contrary influence relationship between the text’s information quantity and the readability, clarity and cognition. Thus, the information quantity of each floor or direction guidance shall be kept within 7 text messages, so as to help the elderly accurately get the information that they need within the shortest time.
Sixthly, there is a strong influencing relationship between the text color and background color and the readability, cognition, clarity and boldness. In geriatric hospitals, the combination of blue characters on white background, the top combination in the ranking, should be adopted since there is the best visual cognitive effect with the medium brightness contrast and high color contrast.
Seventhly, for the convenience of the elderly to percept, understand and read the position information, the arrangement of words and arrows should also be considered in combination with the logical order of information. The arrow of direction guide adopts the design method of aligning both ends so that the arrow is the closest to the setting of target direction.
This study shows a series of objective and specific data from the perspective of visual design. These data could provide useful basic data for the planning of the sign design system for geriatric hospitals. Furthermore, the study fills in the blank space in the sign design for the elderly in the technical code and the contents of the empirical study. A vast of empirical study data in the study outcomes provides suggestions and references for the amendment of the code in the future.