Principles of Icon Design
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Principles of Icon Design
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Re: Principles of Icon Design
#2I really think that icons should be judiciously used, in the event of notification of a serious type. An alert, a warning or an immediate attention to a hazard. Icons have a cognitive overhead of learning it - if we design icons of different styles and artistic expression, they lose their efficiency in cognitive detection. An interface with lots of icons without text (For e.g. SolidWorks, 3DS MAX, Houdini) requires professional training and lots of experience. But a universally recognized icon such as the ones defined in ISO 7010 [1] are popularized and standardized - why? Because, if these icons are standardized, they gain popularity and recognizeability. I am guessing, the cognitive overhead in icon detection and interpretation becomes less as we are constantly exposed to these icons. It doesn’t have to be officially standardized. For example, Floppy disk icon (save a file) and on/off icons. Ofcourse, designers will continue to do things as a statement of artistic expression at the expense of all kinds of things - legibility, accessibility and as I said earlier, recognizeability. But that would make the world a really boring place, so let's allow creativity.
There are a bunch of people that studied semiology of graphics. Frutiger did a lot of work in iconography. Vignilli and a few other
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_7010
PS - Btw, skeumorphic design is back, watch out for it in the next decade.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#3If I could lodge a complaint to all the UI designers: please stop making all the icons look the same in order for them to have the same "style." If I'm looking at a grid of essentially identical white-on-black pictograms with overlapping forms composed entirely of outlines with no variation in thickness or stroke, then you might as well just use actual words at that point.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#4I really think that icons should be judiciously used, in the event of notification of a serious type. An alert, a warning or an immediate attention to a hazard. Icons have a cognitive overhead of learning it - if we design icons of different styles and artistic expression, they lose their efficiency in cognitive detection. An interface with lots of icons without text (For e.g. SolidWorks, 3DS MAX, Houdini) requires p…
This screen shot from the message/thread view in Gmail illustrates the problems of using icons without text labels when the icons aren't obvious enough:
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#5Even if I generally agree with the premise of the article and the tipps it gives, it too falls prey to some of the problems of icons. It presents the Yelp food icons as well thought out and intuitive, and I would not have had the slightest idea why the chinese food icon looks that way or what it should represent, because around where I live chinese food is not served or sold in these kind of boxes. The problem remains: if you don't already know the meaning, you can at best guess, but don't understand it intuitively.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#6I really think that icons should be judiciously used, in the event of notification of a serious type. An alert, a warning or an immediate attention to a hazard. Icons have a cognitive overhead of learning it - if we design icons of different styles and artistic expression, they lose their efficiency in cognitive detection. An interface with lots of icons without text (For e.g. SolidWorks, 3DS MAX, Houdini) requires p…
Agree to a point - not all icons are intuitive or well designed. (1) Often well designed icons can bring a sense of understanding or convey function of a tool.
However many icons are invented/designed to convey an esoteric function that doesn’t exist in standard non-digital tools. In some cases a text description could be equally as useful but it might take up more room in an interface. Often a iconed toolbar creates a more intuitive interface for users whose focus is on creating images or manipulating complex data. Icons and a well thought out workspace differ from a CLE, but allow users with differing levels of understanding and experience to create useful documents and processes. Personally I think Autodesk is a company that profits primarily on user training for unintuitive software, they also seem to change their products to require relearning and sell certification.
The point about Houdini, Max, and Solidworks needing deep training is ridiculous, a French horn only has 3 or 4 keys, so all players should be able to achieve proficiency easily. However in music, (and 3D modeling) deeper concepts exist to create meaningful and diverse compositions. (1) Icons are a recently modern idea - the 1964 Tokyo Olympics employed them to bridge language barriers. Today icons/pictographs are used in almost every interface and wayfinding (signage) device around the world.
Skeuomorphic design is a good concept to help users understand general concepts. Advanced users who have a grasp of computing are more apt to interpret abstract icons and use them as time savers.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#7This is also a crap article on icon design. Too little focus on context or actual implementation. Every medium article seems to me a crap resume builder, loads of 1st year experts telling you the crap they learned in profession bootcamp.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#8The author has criticised the design of the "electric power steering system warning light" icon without suggesting a better alternative. What's the point of criticizing then? Some concepts are easier to depict literally, others are not.
The most important part about the car icons is the color: an orange icon means you can go, a red icon means you must immediately stop.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#9In the 10+ years I've been running a UI/UX design firm for software companies, I've come to the conclusion that icon design, is not very different from logo design and brand design. A Nike swish logo by itself, without context of the brand we have with it today, is just a random piece of graphic. The pixels itself are worth practically nothing. But because when we see the Nike logo, we feel something (Athleticism, motivation, inspiration, energy, etc.) the mark is worth billions. The magic is not in the mark itself, it's in the context and meaning it builds up in the user's mind over time. Same goes for icons. When seeing a play button with a red background and a white triangle, it might suggest you're looking at a Youtube video. Icons, have no real meaning or worth without context that's built up over time. Both are 'investment graphics'. So the purpose of an icon should be to make the user familiar with something and initiate a mental model when you see it (You see Nike, you feel something. You see a Play button, you know you need to click it, etc.). Don't judge icons by their looks, but by their context. In other words: Can the icon you are adding in your UI, over time and by continuously link the mark to a specific outcome, make the product easier to use because it instantly gives the user a mental model of it's meaning and consequence when clicked.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#10I really think that icons should be judiciously used, in the event of notification of a serious type. An alert, a warning or an immediate attention to a hazard. Icons have a cognitive overhead of learning it - if we design icons of different styles and artistic expression, they lose their efficiency in cognitive detection. An interface with lots of icons without text (For e.g. SolidWorks, 3DS MAX, Houdini) requires p…
I do like the idea of a standardised set of icons for user interfaces. Beyond a certain set of core elements, which isn’t very large – search, cancel, arrows, settings – icons tend to only really serve a purpose after they are learnt for whatever specific application. Having a quasi-official set might help in making UI iconography more universal. Then of course allow creativity on top of that. To some degree this is already the case, but having a body add some rigour to these de facto conventions would be nice.