Global icons and symbols

I am finally on the last leg of my usability tour of Asia having reached Japan. Japan is an amazing country with great people but I have really struggled with going into shops, ordering food and generally moving around the place as everything is written in Japanese (not surprisingly as I am in Japan!)

All of the text in train stations, on advertising and most street signs are in Japanese.

I have experienced similar difficulties when working in Madrid. However, as we share a near identical alphabet, it was easier to give words a phonetic value and compare them to an English equivalent. Not so in Japan, the lack of any visual reference with the alphabet/symbols made me understand what it must be like to be illiterate.

One area however, where I think the people of the world enjoy a shared understanding is in the use of pictures and icons. I find myself pointing to pictures of food in restaurants and then dearly hoping that it tastes as good as it looks. I also experienced no confusion when entering a ladies loo – the icons on the walls were completely clear to me.

Has anyone else found icons really useful when travelling?

Also see Paul Blunden’s post on usable traffic signals

Originally written by Amanda Roach