User factors such as age group, education level, years of working
experience in the construction industry, vividness of visual imagery,
object imagery preference and spatial imagery preference;
and referent characteristics such as familiarity, concreteness, ease
of visualization and context availability were examined in this
study. Referent familiarity means the perceived frequency with
which a sign referent has been seen before. Ease of visualization
refers to the ease of forming a visual mental picture of a sign referent.
Concrete referents represent an actual substance or thing,
whereas abstract referents denote something apart from some
material or object basis. High context availability refers to the situation
where people can easily associate a sign referent with a certain
context or circumstance in which the referent would appear;
otherwise, the referent is said to be low context availability. A group
of Hong Kong Chinese construction workers were asked to draw different
safety sign referents and were then asked to narrate their
drawings and redesign ideas. The drawings for each sign referent
and the user and referent effects in sign redesign were assessed