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carrier. To specify the demographic attributes of the respondents, we asked each
respondent's gender and age group (teens/twenties/thirties/forties/fifties or older). We
then asked the following questions for each of the 24 pictograms selected by the
preliminary survey:
•
Do you use this pictogram? (Yes/No)
•
How often do you use this pictogram? (1 = Hardly ever use, through 4 = Often
use), or a usage frequency of 0 if the respondent answered 'No' to the previous
question.
What is your interpretation of this pictogram? (Free response)
•
•
Provide a usage example of this pictogram. (Free response)
We received responses from 276 respondents of both genders and all five age groups,
from questionnaires given between October 1 and November 20, 2008, and between
July 1 and October 31, 2009.
2.3 Questionnaire Results
We tallied the interpretations of all 72 (24 × 3 mobile phone carriers) pictograms, and
after standardizing any variations in the presentation of identical interpretations
among the 6,624 interpretations (such as '[Laughter]' and 'Laughing') to forms
agreed on unanimously by the three authors of this paper, we tallied the number of
respondents who reported using each interpretation. We then calculated the usage
frequency of each interpretation as a percentage of the respondents using that
pictogram, and used these percentages to find pictograms with age-specific or gender-
specific differences of interpretation.
We defined a pictogram with an age-specific interpretation when one of its
interpretations accounts for more than 20% of its all interpretation responses in the
same age group, and the percentages of the interpretation have wider than 20% among
the ones in other age groups. Gender-specific pictograms are also defined in the same
way. We found 13 pictograms that show tendency of age-specific or gender-specific
differences of interpretation in the following pictograms—pictograms showing (1)
gestures, (2) emotions, and (3) faces/facial expressions. We defined a pictogram with
no difference of interpretation to be a pictogram with the same interpretation reported
by all the demographic groups, with the interpretation accounting for more than 50%
of the responses from each group. We found eight pictograms with a tendency of
having no differences of interpretation. Pictogram interpretations and examples are
described in detail in the sections below.
2.3.1 Pictograms with a Tendency of Age-Specific Differences of Interpretation
This section describes pictograms with a tendency of age-specific differences of
interpretation. In the sections below, 'AG1' denotes respondents aged 10 to 19, 'AG2'
respondents aged 20 to 29, 'AG3' respondents aged 30 to 39, 'AG4' respondents aged
40 to 49, and 'AG5' respondents aged 50 or older.
•
Pictograms showing gestures
The number of answers for the pictogram shown on the left of Figure 5 is as
follows: AG1 (n=16), AG2 (n=25), AG3 (n=10), AG4 (n=5), AG5 (n=6).
Interpretation as 'Happy' in the pictogram accounts for more than 20% in
