Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Safety signs provide information,related to hazards or dangers in the industry,in form of instructions. These signs are effective as long as they are designed in accordance with principles of ergonomics and design cognitive features. The purpose of this present research was to study the relationship between cognitive features of signs and ability to guess, and to develop the relevant regression model.

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Materials and methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 employees in a petrochemical industry complex. A three part questionnaire was used to collect required data while first part of the questionnaire dealt with demographic information, second part included cognitive features of signs designand the third part proceeded on testing the ability to guess. Then, a regression model was developed to determine the relationship between cognitive features, and the ability to guess.

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Results: Mean and standard deviation obtained for the ability to guess the total study signs were 63.73 and 4.36, respectively. The feature of “familiarity” obtained the lowest possible score (49.15). The “semantic closeness” (β=0/390) and “meaningfulness” (β=0/369) had the highest correlation with the ability to guess safety signs.

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Conclusion: According to results of this study, use of principles of ergonomic design of signs and training are necessary to promote the ability to guess the safety signs to the minimum available standards. Therefore, it is possible to balance cognitive features especially “familiarity”, with the lowest score, and “meaningfulness” and “semantic closeness”, with the highest influential relationship with the ability to guess of signs. The developed regression model for this industry can be used to predict the ability to guess of safety signs in future studies

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Introduction: The design of traffic signs should consider human cognitive abilities to enhance drivers’ understanding of the signs. Cognitive features, as one of the crucial principles of ergonomics, are among the influential factors in the design of signs. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of graphic elements of eight new sign designs based on cognitive features on conveying the message “prohibition of using mobile phones.”
Material and Methods: This study was conducted in six driving schools in Tehran in 2013. One hundred seventy-four participants, with an average age of 23.5 and a standard deviation of six years, participated in this study. Participants were then presented with the designed signs through a colored questionnaire. They were instructed to evaluate the signs’ cognitive features including simplicity, concreteness, meaningfulness, and semantic closeness—using a Likert scale ranging from 0 to 100. 
Results: The results revealed that the average score of the cognitive features of the designed signs is higher than other traffic, industrial and pharmaceutical signs. In this study, “semantic closeness” was the best cognitive feature for predicting the message of the signs. The sign with the “hands-free” element had the best performance in transferring the message.
Conclusion: This research aimed to identify the most effective of eight proposed signs for banning mobile phone use while driving. Participants rated the sign featuring a button phone with a hands-free symbol as the top choice. Although most of the mobile phones in the market are of the touch screen type and the use of button phones has decreased a lot, the symbol of these phones as the dominant symbol still effectively conveys messages.