11–20 of 42 posts
It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
Our kids will be so confused...
OK, "WWW" is fairly universal, but generally it's best to avoid any text - an icon should be language-independent.
It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
It recently occurred to me that the icon of a phone is of a type of phone that almost nobody uses anymore. And the icon of a camping site uses a model of tent that nobody uses anymore either. Our kids will be so confused...
Another anecdote: I heard on some NPR show that most kids don't understand what the sound of a record being scratched to a halt actually is. (This sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn6s1FE-yKQ) When asked, they describe it as the noise that is made on TV when you do a double-take.
A great example of the wrong way to report user research. - How many participants were tested? - Who was tested? - What kind of test was it? Survey? Lab study? etc? - Between subjects or within (i.e. did the same people see all the icons)? I could go on.
It's a widely misunderstood claim that there exist some sort of universally objective way to visualize various features.
Intuition around interfaces is learned through using the interface not by some universally understood metaphors.
Most user don't understand what they are doing conceptually.
The original link (blue color underlined) is the most understood version of a link yet the concept in itself brings no clarity of it's purpose.
The experiment is more or less a self-full-filled prophesy.
It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
It recently occurred to me that the icon of a phone is of a type of phone that almost nobody uses anymore. And the icon of a camping site uses a model of tent that nobody uses anymore either. Our kids will be so confused...
Though it might make sense in that case as it is what it replaces.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It recently occurred to me that the icon of a phone is of a type of phone that almost nobody uses anymore. And the icon of a camping site uses a model of tent that nobody uses anymore either. Our kids will be so confused...
Similarly, to access music on my iPhone, I click an image of an iPod. Another anecdote: I heard on some NPR show that most kids don't understand what the sound of a record being scratched to a halt actually is. (This sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn6s1FE-yKQ ) When asked, they describe it as the noise that is made on TV when you do a double-take.
And since I don't qualify as a kid, I am guessing that most mid-twenties wouldn't know either.