Handball

Category

Sports, Ball Sports, Team Sports, Sporting Activities, Activities, Recreation, Tourism

Message / Function

For notice in general and to indicate the possibility of playing handball

	Source	Description
	O'72	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	O'80	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	BS 8501:2002	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	O'88	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	O'21	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	Wien BfS	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	CNIS	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	O'12	Human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone
	O'64	Human figure throwing the ball
	Amoghdesign	Handball
	O'24	Plan view of handball field, superimposed with handball framed by square

Note: Some of the examples shown above were mirrored horizontally to contrast differences.

Discussion

Pictograms found - mainly from Olympic games - frequently show a move typical for handball: a human figure throwing the ball while "diving" into the 6-meter zone. As other image contents are rare, this could be seen as a visual stereotype for the referent Handball.

In our research we did not discover any test data on comprehensibility of pictograms concerning Handball, but the typical images shown above should be quite comprehensible. Just showing a handball as in the pictogram example by Amoghdesign in the table above does not guarantee sufficient differentiation from other ball sports like Football or Volleyball.

Recommendations

We suggest to conduct a Comprehension Test with pictograms covering the basic concepts available to identify possible misinterpretations concerning other ball sports. Detailed information about the most frequent responses given in each of the response categories must be supplied for each pictogram variant tested to correctly judge comprehensibility and improve designs, if necessary. On such a basis the best decision concerning a specific recommendation can be reached.