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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

#81

Post by conanbatt »

com2kid wrote: post #39
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),…

> You have to teach the user what the icon means. Recognition speed presumably goes up with familiarity. I have Age - 6 years of experience reading, I have far less than that with whatever icon you come up with. Let's take starting an app as an example. On my Smartphone I use the email client "Nine". I probably open up the app manually (versus tapping on a notification) about 5 or 6 times a day. It took me ~3-5 month…

> character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that it should be our go to.

This is also a problem. You cant avoid reading text when its presented to you, so extra text makes the page cluttery, and hard to find the text you really want to read. It is very useful to replace an ever same-looking label for an recognizable icon (Like "Close", "Open", "Save" etc).

Re: The best icon is a text label

#82

Post by thaumasiotes »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #57
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) they're not pictograms and (b) hieroglyphs worked for thousands of years.

(a) Yes, they are ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... ). (b) So why'd the Egyptians stop using them? What makes them right for today's needs?

From your link, "pictograms" are glyphs that depict the objects they represent (for example, 下 directly depicts the abstract concept of "down").

Egyptian hieroglyphs, in their ornate form, clearly depict various items like reeds, birds, arms, and snakes. But those glyphs don't actually refer to the reeds, birds, arms, and snakes they show; rather, the ancient Egyptian writing system is largely alphabetic. Their formal letters were just much prettier than ours.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#83

Post by userbinator »

The fundamental problem with icons is that they can mean so many different things, as the example with washing shows. I've heard this summed up as "a picture is worth a thousand words, but you don't want a thousand words when one will do."

I don't use Apple Mail, so this is an example of what a completely new user --- albeit one who has used computers for a long time --- thinks when they see those icons along the top:

- It's a closed envelope. Mail? Send? Close?

- Write? Edit? Compose? Sign?

- No idea what this is.

- Trash can. Deleted items? Delete?

- Left-pointing arrow --- but coming from bottom and looking like it expands outward. Back? Open message in separate window?

- Two left-pointing arrows. Rewind?

- Forward to next message? And why is this arrow not coming out of the bottom, unlike the two to its left?

- Flag. This is probably the clearest of them all.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#84

Post by Dylan16807 »

derefr wrote: post #74
jimmaswell wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the start button a travesty is ridiculous. The start menu is a useful and appropriate menu where programs and other shortcuts are listed that nobody really has a problem with outside contrived complaints on the internet that were made for the sake of complaining. The real travesty was the abrasive and confusing replacement they made for it in Windows 8.

You weren't around for the release of Windows 95, I take it. The OS tried very hard to point out that you have to click the start button to, well, start doing things—but people usually just Didn't Get It anyway until someone guided them through the process. Probably the best thing Microsoft could have done back then was make a little pseudo-video† walkthrough, showing people what's in the Start Menu and what happens…

But you only have to learn it once. Just like the hamburger.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#87

Post by userbinator »

oblio wrote: post #48
LukeShu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 W…

> 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's generally a good idea to look through the settings or search on the internet if you don't like something on your PC. Windows 7/8/8.1/10 all allow using labels and text for the taskbar buttons.

I was forced to use Windows 8.1 recently and had a similar experience - I decided to go with icons-only to see how long I could stand it before I got used to it, or reverted to icons+text. I reverted after a few days because it was really difficult to find the right button. Even icons for apps that I'd surely have seen and used many times, like Visual Studio, were much slower to find amongst the ~dozen others without the text.

The other real irritation comes from the fact that the selected button no longer has a "pushed in" effect like Windows Classic used to have, but only a very subtle colour change (and the colour varies depending on the colour of the icon too... so instead of just one "active" colour for everything, I now have to figure out what each app's active colour is to find it quickly):

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-d...

Re: The best icon is a text label

#88

Post by honestcoyote »

pool wrote: post #18
CaptSpify wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think "Am I turning into a stereotypical old person? Unable to use a computer?" I always feel like I'm just out of touch.

I guess we gain perspective. We have the stereotype of old people being cranky and stupid (like I come from the era of cd-rom cupholder jokes, faxing images of floppies, etc.), but probably there were intelligent old people out there telling us about missing context and we didn't listen or by its nature what they had to say couldn't get press or something.

I think you're on to something huge and important.

Some years ago I was working for an educational software company. We sold directly to schools. As expected, we'd get a lot of feedback from teachers using the product. For a while, everyone from the execs on down would ignore this feedback with a laugh. The majority of teachers we dealt with were absolutely clueless about anything involving software. Their reports reflected this ineptness.

One day, I had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, these people were worth listening to. We went over the written feedback, translated their ramblings into something approximating proper bug reports, and it turned out they were doing a wonderful job of pointing out many of the problems (especially UI) hiding in our blind spots.

We had dismissed them because of a perceived cluelessness, and probably because of some internalized ageism & sexism (most of these teachers were middle aged+ women and most of my team was not). And yet when we finally listened to them, we put out an update which led to several accolades, a sudden drop-off in complaints, and probably our best selling product.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#89

Post by intrasight »

In browser UX, you simply mouse-over an icon to get it's tooltip. But screens are big so there's almost always room for labels. In mobile UX, there's just not much room for labels. I don't see why more apps don't use a tap-and-hold approach for showing a tooltip.

Re: The best icon is a text label

#90

Post by sandGorgon »

dizzystar wrote: post #27

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 matt…

+1

This is a huge issue with open source software - everything seems to be named Libre- these days and I haven't found many Americans who can pronounce it...let alone people in China or India.

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