Research findings - with Irish language speakers
Above: Slides from the screen-based test asking users to choose the clearer sign of two on each slide. Designs that were tested included the colour differentiated design using Turas my experimental road sign typeface, Clearview Hwy the new US design, the undifferentiated sign design used in Wales and the current Irish sign design, which uses uppercase English words beneath an inclined ‘italic’ Irish language typeface.
Comparative testing of designs for clarity
Having researched the issues and developed an initial prototype design solution I constructed a simple test showing comparative examples of existing versus alternative signage solutions. This article deals with the results of the Irish language speaking test group.
Each respondent was asked to indicate the sample (a choice of two per slide) which was the clearer of two — or to indicate if each was the same in terms of clarity. I did not prescribe a time limit to react to each sign but rather left it to the respondents to make a judgement and indicate the clearest option — ‘left’, ‘right’ or ‘same’.
If this was to show a clear result, it would be viability of an upper and lowercase solution versus the current configuration (would respondents overwhelmingly favour the status quo? Would they state any preference?). I also considered that the use of a secondary colour as language differentiator might provoke a response, but had no idea how this would be received.
Why a specific Irish language test?
I created this separate test for users who use Irish as a first or preferred language. The majority of road users are reading English as a first language and consulting maps and route planners in that language, so to introduce an unrepresentative proportion of Irish speakers to the overall test would potentially ‘skew’ the results. For 3% of Irish households Irish is the language in daily use, although a much higher percentage has an active interest in the language (Government of Ireland, 2006). It is fair to say that I expected more awareness of sign types from some of the members of this group, and that representation of Irish as a national language may be important to these road users and might be a factor in their selections. This led me to speculate that users in this group might favour the Welsh style signs — on grounds that this could be argued to be the ‘most equal’ as is argued in Wales (Welsh Language Board 2001).
Findings…
Above: Colour differentiated upper & lowercase solutions, shown here as blue (Turas) and green (Clearview) were overwhelmingly chosen for clarity in preference to both the current Irish signs, and the Welsh-style configuration.
Results are based on 120 respondents. This group of road users provided very a very clear result, which would appear to confirm the thesis that the Irish language as it is currently configured on signs is not satisfactory to Irish speakers. In all cases the colour differentiated option was preferred by a great majority of respondents.
What is interesting here also, to my surprise, is that the poor performance of the Welsh-style design is replicated from the English language test. The Welsh-style signs, whilst delivering ‘equal prominence’ for the Irish language, are not seen as being ‘clear’ relative to the colour differentiated designs.
Above: Comparative test for clarity, the prototype sign design with colour differentiation was deemed cleared by a great majority of participants (Irish language speaking road users).
Above: Comparative test for clarity, the prototype sign design with colour differentiation was deemed cleared than the undifferentiated Welsh style sign design by a great majority of participants (Irish language speaking road users).
Current policy regarding Ireland’s dual language road signs suggests that the current design achieves clarity by differentiating between the languages, but this research confirms the thesis that in the current design differentiation is achieved at the expense of the Irish language. In fact, a negative effect is also apparent on the functionality of signs from an English language users perspective, which I deal with further here, and I will post the findings of the comparative testing from the English speaking user group here soon also.
