Icons For the Mass: An Approach Towards Text Free Smart Interface

A major population of 3
^rd
world countries have problems reading out texts because of the low literacy rate. While smartphones have given them a hope to lead a better life, interacting with them needs a certain level of literacy which a majority of them lack. Given the rapid growth of variation in this user base, it is evident that interactive graphical representations can give a better understanding of contents especially to the children and to the illiterate people. This work emphasizes on making the Google Play App Store more usable as this is the most used app for smartphone users. In this study, new icons have been designed and then compared side by side with 16 existing Google Play Store app category icons to initially find out the legitimacy of the new icons. Further, a survey between smartphone users has been conducted and the results show that the new icons fare better while representing app categories. Based on the survey results and more widely accepted icons, some key factors to design icons have been identified.