Application icons are an essential part of almost all visual user interfaces. As such, the visual design of an application icon can have a major impact on the usability performance, and therefore, the consumer satisfaction and success of the corresponding application. However, there has been very little empirical research on the ways in which various visual properties of icons affect their performance during different phases of consumers’ interactions with them. In this paper, we present an online survey study conducted with design professionals to evaluate their understanding of the importance of different visual properties of mobile application icons—complexity, concreteness, and familiarity—during the customer journey, from the first exposure to assurance and continued the use of applications. Based on our findings, we evaluated the relevance of a set of existing guidelines for the visual design of application icons with the aim of improving their targeted customer journey. Designers generally agreed with most of the proposed guidelines. The highest‐rated guidelines included the importance of strong contrast for rapid recognition during continued use, and the role of familiarity in supporting visual processing fluency during assurance and visual search during continued use.
Korpilahti et al. (Thu,) studied this question.