Icon is one part of UX (user experience system), which determines how users feel

when they use a product, and even leads to user loyalty. The use of colors is one way to

improve user experience and eventually makes users to be loyalty towards a product.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate users’ icon color preferences, in order

to assist designers creating appropriate and widely preferred icons. This study explored how

colors and display polarity affected on icon preferences. The results shown that blue, green,

and red icons were more preferred over yellow, orange, and purple colored icons. And

negative-displayed icons were generally more preferred than positive-displayed icons.

This study aims to find empirical evidence of effectiveness levels: comfort, efficiency, and accuracy between analog and digital interface on smartphone game control through the two different usability tests: 1) A Pilot Study for measuring a correlation contrast with direct and indirect input control from six participants in a small group; 2) A Main Study for finding the effectiveness of “Tap-only affords” basis between a digital and analog input control. The usability test was analyzed by both qualitative and quantitative research methods. There was a total of the 81 participants who were divided into two big groups for comparing one hand and two hands input control, and nine participants per each group implemented a smartphone game based on different input control tasks. The findings appear that direct touch screen interaction is more effective on two hands input control tasks while using an indirect physical input control was more effective on one hand touchscreen.

Graphic design in different countries exhibits strong cultural characteristics of the countries. The beauty of cultural differences is commonly viewed as making graphic design unique and valuable. Alternately, the diversity of cultures may also result in unsatisfactory design due to a cultural barrier between the designer and people who are from a different cultural background. As a graphic designer, creating high-quality visual information that satisfies consumers with different cultural backgrounds is very important. Misinterpretation and misunderstanding of some cultures may result in design failure or cause conflict between different cultural groups. This study compares the acceptance levels of various kinds of symbols between people with a Chinese cultural background and those with a background that is not culturally Chinese. For this comparative study, three representative objects were selected: dragon, monkey and fish. For each object, three symbols were selected or designed. An online survey was conducted among currently enrolled students at Iowa State University to evaluate people’ acceptance of these symbols. This study found that people from different cultural backgrounds perceive meaning of symbols differently. The choices they made were influenced by which ethnic group they came from. When looking at the same set of objects, participants from the same ethnic group tend to make the same choices. In addition, the study results also indicate that Chinese symbols do have strong cultural characteristics that can be easily distinguished from Western symbol designs. With the influence of cultural differences on symbols changing over time, the trend is that Chinese style becomes more recognizable by people from other ethnicities and who speak other languages.