Sign

Kuhbandner and Pekrun studied how the color of writing influences how well information in written messages is remembered.  Their work is immediately applicable to sign and map design, for example.  The researchers learned that “Making words outstanding by color [i.e., making a particular word a different color that nearby words] strongly enhanced memory [for those differently colored words] . . . . Most intriguingly, the effects of emotion on memory additionally depended on color type.

Electronic billboards distract drivers.  Dukic and her team found that “Electronic billboards have an effect on gaze behaviour by attracting more and longer glances than regular traffic signs . . . . Dwell times are longer, the visual time sharing intensity is higher, very long single glances are more frequent, and the number of fixations is greater for the electronic billboards.

Effective signage and maps are an important component of many projects, particularly complex ones such as office complexes and healthcare facilities.  Hegarty investigated the sorts of signs that people say they prefer, when asked, and those that are actually most useful to them.  She learned that people “have a tendency to choose more realistic and complex maps over less realistic and simple ones, even though performance is more efficient with simple maps.”  As Hegarty states, “one implication of the research presented here is that it is important to object