Studying Children's Semantic Association for Icon Design of Book Subject Categories

The semantic association test is mostly used to measure the mental state and creativity of the participants. This research aims to investigate the feasibility of applying the results obtained by the semantic association test to the design of icons for children-related mobile applications. The result has shown that children's cognitive abilities are immature. Therefore, when designing mobile apps, using items that conform to the knowledge structure of children in the icon design will make it easier for children to understand. This research gathered 100 elementary students to conduct experiments that selected representative semantically related words. The study has found that children's associations with words are usually based on specific situations or their own experiences, which also have a high degree of similarity. If images that conform to children's cognitive framework can be used in children's icon design, it will be able to help children understand less familiar functions and words through the correlation between words.