Population Stereotyped Icons: A Study of Agrarian Communities in India

Knowledge transfer is a key factor for increasing agriculture yield especially in developing countries like India. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) is the best platform for knowledge transfer. However, the expertise level of novice users living in India has compromised usage of ICT services. To fill the gap, we suggest for icons to be developed using population stereotype production method. In this study, we first generated population stereotype representations for sixteen different function labels. We then compared the performance and representativeness of these populationstereotyped icons with other ideas. Two separate experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, ninety-two participants from the farming communities were asked to draw images to represent sixteen function labels. In the second experiment, eighty-eight participants were equally distributed into four groups to evaluate the performance and representativeness of all the population-stereotyped representations. This study answered one of the most significant questions regarding the utility of using population-stereotyped ideas for the development of icons in the context of agrarian societies of rural India. The study also offered important practical implications for designing representative icons by using representations developed by different participants during population stereotype production.