Iconography for international users: Developing a systematic approach to ensuring comprehension of UI icons at scale

Material Design provides an open source library of over 3,000 icons for both digital and print use by anyone, anywhere in the world. The library includes icons for user interface (UI) interactions and icons for visuals. While these icons are available globally and do include international symbols, such as different currency icons, our understanding of how the icons are interpreted by a global audience from different regions and cultures is limited. We are developing a research approach that evaluates classes of icons at scale to understand how design teams can ensure their iconography is legible to end users. Our aim is to provide design guidance for selecting icons from the Material Design library for international end-users and target interventions to help end-users develop familiarity with icons.