• Judy Edworthy, Rebecca Page, Andrea Hibbard, Sean Kyle, Paul Ratnage, and Suzanne Claydon.
• School of Psychology, Drake Circus, Plymouth University, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK. Electronic address: jedworthy@plymouth.ac.uk.
• Appl Ergon. 2014 Sep 1; 45 (5): 1291-6.

AbstractThree sets of eight alarms supporting eight functions specified in an international medical equipment standard (IEC 60601-1-8) were tested for learnability using non-anaesthetist participants. One set consisted of the tonal alarms specified in the standard. A second set consisted of a set of abstract alarms randomly selected from a database of abstract alarm sounds held by the authors. A third set of alarms was designed as indirect metaphors of the functions. Participants were presented with the alarms and then asked to identify them across ten blocks of eight trials. The results indicated a significant difference in learnability across the three sets of alarms. The indirect metaphors were learned significantly better than both other sets of alarms, and the randomly selected abstract alarms were learned significantly better than the alarms specified in the standard. The results suggest therefore that there are more readily learnable possible designs than those proposed in the standard. The use of auditory icons in particular should be given serious consideration as potential alarms for this application. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.

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