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The best icon is a text label

thomasbyttebier.be

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Re: The best icon is a text label

#21

Post by lazerwalker »

adevine wrote: post #19
TillE wrote: post #12

I'd love to see some empirical data, but my intuition is that text + colored icon is the ideal (in terms of how quickly you can find what you want) for both new and experienced users. Every little clue helps navigation, and makes me feel more confident about using an application.

When I see a pushback against icon-only buttons, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the mobile space is changing so rapidly that things don't have a chance to "settle down" like they did for previous technologies. I mean, I don't think it's inherently obvious that a triangle pointing to the right means play, a square means stop, and a circle means record. However, it didn't take cassette players and VCR…

I feel like the hamburger button is a special example, since the fact that your mobile app has a "here's where we shoved the features we couldn't fit in anywhere else" menu is usually a smell that you have deeper design issues at the information architecture level.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#23

Post by LukeShu »

TillE wrote: post #12

I'd love to see some empirical data, but my intuition is that text + colored icon is the ideal (in terms of how quickly you can find what you want) for both new and experienced users. Every little clue helps navigation, and makes me feel more confident about using an application.

I only have an anecdote, but: I've discovered that I have no ability to differentiate between icons while working. On my own computers, I use WMII, a minimalist tiling window manager; that is: text and no icons. Before that, I'd used "traditional" window managers that showed the icon and program name in the bottom bar (Gnome, Vista, XP, 95). Anyway, at my last job, IT decided that the computer on my desk should run Windows 7, which only has the icon in the bottom bar. It was totally unusable to me; if I was working on something and wanted to switch windows, my brain would never know which one to click; more often then not, I'd just try clicking on each of them until I got the window I wanted.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#25

Post by matt-attack »

mschuster91 wrote: post #22

If you decide to use icons, offer a hover-tooltip. Even if you decide to use a textual button, offer a hover tooltip if there's a keyboard shortcut. (Hello phpStorm, I'm looking at YOU!)

I can't for the life of me figure out why apple is so insistent on not using tooltips in OS-X (example, Safari).

Re: The best icon is a text label

#26

Post by [deleted] »

rconti wrote: post #4

I always laugh when I see that "unclear laundry icons" image, because I recently had the experience of trying to use a combined washer/dryer machine in a foreign country. The icons truly are asinine, you can't even get close to guessing what you want. For fun, I looked it up. Some of the icons are obvious, a few make sense once you know the basics , and still others seem almost sillier once explained. http://www.text…

[deleted]

Re: The best icon is a text label

#27

Post by dizzystar »

I remember getting into a debate about this subject with a self-described UI expert. It was part enlightening and part frustrating. He failed to see the point that so many of his ideas were US-centric, and didn't make sense in any context outside of English-speaking languages, and to be honest, they barely made sense in English. The author brings up Gmail, which has an icon for "archive" that makes zero sense no matter how I try to connect the dot, but at least Gmail gives you and out: turn the confusing icons to text.

Despite being a programmer -- but not front end work -- I find myself struggling more and more with UI and especially icons. I think so much of it reflects the current trend of zero empathy for the end-user. Fortunately, I know enough about computers to get around many of these issues, but icons are the one area that I still struggle with.

Unless you have some site with several million users, teaching end-users is a wasted effort, and it does well to either piggy-back on other ideas or use text. Even Facebook is using text, and it seems a little odd that anyone smaller would feel they have some lessons to teach the end-user about UI. UI, in my opinion, doesn't mean "pretty," it means "usable," which is sort of implied by U meaning "user." If a significant portion of your user-base is computer illiterate, which will often be the default, it does well to UI to the lowest common denominator. Once your user presses the back button because your icons made them feel stupid, you lost a customer, and that is a very high price for "pretty."

Re: The best icon is a text label

#28

Post by roywiggins »

rconti wrote: post #4

I always laugh when I see that "unclear laundry icons" image, because I recently had the experience of trying to use a combined washer/dryer machine in a foreign country. The icons truly are asinine, you can't even get close to guessing what you want. For fun, I looked it up. Some of the icons are obvious, a few make sense once you know the basics , and still others seem almost sillier once explained. http://www.text…

I encountered this machine, which had a manual on top, hooray! But it didn't include explanations of any of the symbols:

https://imgur.com/Sdwrvqv

I ended up going for "40 degrees shirts and pants" since that matched what I was actually trying to wash, but God help anyone trying to use that machine with any specific requirements.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#29

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

brenschluss wrote: post #17

> Don’t use an icon if its meaning isn’t a 100% clear to everyone. When in doubt, skip the icon. Reside to simple copy. A text label is always clearer. The article is misguided, in that it assumes that the meaning of an icon only exists in the lines/color/visual form of the icon. Icons are visual language . You have to teach the user what the icon means. Either the user has seen the icon before (such as in airports),…

I think the author does address this - further down, he gives examples of icons that have little meaning to outsiders, but that regular users will understand.
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