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Redesigning the Save Symbol

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Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#31

Post by jacalata »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #27

Maybe I'm getting old, but seeing conversations like this irritate me. All I see in that wall of text are activity indicators, upload icons, and "TO THE CLOUD!!!" icons. Internet Comment Designers seem to think that skeuomorphism (a word they love using to tell the world 'LOOK, I KNOW BIG WORDS SO I MUST BE GOOD AT THINGS') must always be a bad thing...as if using the icon to save as a floppy disk is somehow less con…

Absolutely. Anyway, if skeumorphism is bad, and the floppy icon is so unrecognisable as to be abstract (which appears to be the 'problem' these designers think needs solving), doesn't that mean the floppy icon is now good?

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#32

Post by nglevin »

hkmurakami wrote: post #20
nglevin wrote: post #11

I always wondered why nobody else seemed to follow the lead of Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows. Use "save" and "load" icons that portray arrows pointing to and from folders [1]. Never have to worry about a floppy again. Turns out, these guys just did that. Except with documents [2] and clouds [3] instead of folders. Guess iOS did away with those. [1] - As seen in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lotus_1-2-3_9.8_Windows.p..…

People with relatively poor vision may have a problem identifying those icons.

Someone tried to make an effort.

The load icon's arrow is bright green, while the save icon's arrow is teal. Which is downright impossible to see at 1440x900.

...I think the idea might have been better than the implementation.

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#33

Post by joeld42 »

What's so bad about a floppy disk icon? Even if the kids today don't know what that is, they still know the icon means save. We recognize a pawnbroker's symbol or a barber pole without knowing where they came from.

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#34

Post by apendleton »

bitwize wrote: post #12

A "phone" these days is usually, more or less, a small box with one glowy side. Yet these self-same devices, to represent "phone", use the silhouette of the handset from an old Bell Telephone landline model, thirty years after those phones went out of fashion. To even the younger generation, that shape means "phone", even if it doesn't look like a phone. Similarly, the D-pad from a NES controller -- or worse, an Atar…

Yes, I completely agree. Having the icon be a floppy disk is only weird during this transitional period when there are software users that regularly used floppy disks and now recognize them as antiquated. Most of the youngest generation of current computer users have probably never seen a floppy disk, so for them, that symbol (like the phone) just means "save," rather than being a representation of an actual thing. Eventually it will probably become more stylized and less recognizable, as people forget what it originally meant.

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#35

Post by fryguy »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #27

Maybe I'm getting old, but seeing conversations like this irritate me. All I see in that wall of text are activity indicators, upload icons, and "TO THE CLOUD!!!" icons. Internet Comment Designers seem to think that skeuomorphism (a word they love using to tell the world 'LOOK, I KNOW BIG WORDS SO I MUST BE GOOD AT THINGS') must always be a bad thing...as if using the icon to save as a floppy disk is somehow less con…

Isn't the standby mode appropriate for power switches that are momentary toggle switches that started in ATX cases, as opposed to the on/off button which would be appropriate for the AT cases, where the switch is an actual power switch?

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#36

Post by Jach »

It doesn't need to be redesigned. I hate this trend of getting rid of very clear text and using nothing but "intuitive" icons that are "universally" understood, and only sometimes making the text available on hover/hold. Using both icon and text is fine, but text is way more important and unambiguous and should always be visible. Especially with the resolution and screen real estate modern displays have.

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#37

Post by krapp »

bitwize wrote: post #12

A "phone" these days is usually, more or less, a small box with one glowy side. Yet these self-same devices, to represent "phone", use the silhouette of the handset from an old Bell Telephone landline model, thirty years after those phones went out of fashion. To even the younger generation, that shape means "phone", even if it doesn't look like a phone. Similarly, the D-pad from a NES controller -- or worse, an Atar…

Icons representing 'obsolete' technology work as ideograms because the form factor of that old technology was unique enough to express a concept in a few pixels, whereas everything now is just some form of a nondescript box which chances are does multiple things. I ran into this problem a couple of years ago when I had to design a television graphic for my company... you know how difficult it is to convey "television" without rabbit ears? I wanted to add them just because that said "this is a tv."

Icons don't have to keep up with the actual technology whose function they represent... they just have to be immediately recognizable.

Re: Redesigning the Save Symbol

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

jacalata wrote: post #31
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #27

Maybe I'm getting old, but seeing conversations like this irritate me. All I see in that wall of text are activity indicators, upload icons, and "TO THE CLOUD!!!" icons. Internet Comment Designers seem to think that skeuomorphism (a word they love using to tell the world 'LOOK, I KNOW BIG WORDS SO I MUST BE GOOD AT THINGS') must always be a bad thing...as if using the icon to save as a floppy disk is somehow less con…

Absolutely. Anyway, if skeumorphism is bad, and the floppy icon is so unrecognisable as to be abstract (which appears to be the 'problem' these designers think needs solving), doesn't that mean the floppy icon is now good?

> Anyway, if skeumorphism is bad, and the floppy icon is so unrecognisable as to be abstract (which appears to be the 'problem' these designers think needs solving), doesn't that mean the floppy icon is now good?

The short answer is "No."

The long answer is that the skeumorphism is bad argument is generally that trying to imitate some kind of physical analog of the computerized process you are doing isn't an effective way of presenting a UI, in part because it imposes additional constraints that aren't native to the medium you are using (limiting your ability to fully utilize the medium you are using) and that it relies on experience with the particular physical analog to provide user understanding of the UI.

An icon that is functionally abstract because it references something that is outside of most users experience would be an example of the problem, not something that somehow flips it on its head and so becomes good.

(OTOH, the use of the floppy-disk-image-as-save-icon is so ubiquitous in software that it is probably a useful image that is well recognized, but that's neither because it originates as a skeumorph or because it is abstract now, but because it is ubiquitous in the digital realm, independent of its origin or current relation to user's non-digital experience.)

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