Always Bet on Text (2014)

However reading pictures is much more subjective than most non-arts-educated might tend to realise. We had a weekly class where we would discuss scenes and pictures and what it evoked in people, what they "read" in it. The one big takeaway I got from this, is just how profoundly different a room full of people can see very clear pictures. This subjectiveness is even worse when you look at gestures and body language of actors – what one student saw as strong and self sufficient, the other might see as forceful and destructive etc.

Of course we also have codified visual languages (traffic signs, warning labels, ...), but they only will work for low complexity info ("Warning slippy surface", but not: "Watch out the last step of that stairway was built to high and might cause you to fall"). The low information density of such symbols is great if you want simple messages to be understandable by a big number of persons very quickly and with little cognitive overhead.

Text can shine when symbols don't suffice, when pictures are to vague, when gestures are unclear. Text is easy to create, modify and copy and I love it for that. My freelance time as a graphic designer convinced me that many people think they can communicate visually, while very few actually can. A lot of people already have issues with getting their message (be it text or spoken word) understood in the way they meant it at the side of the recipient, with visual language this is likely worse.

Like any "hard and fast" rule, however, it tends to go a bit pear-shaped, when viewed from certain contexts.

As someone that has made the mistake of designing a "pure" iconic interface, I can tell you that alternatives to text UI can be quite difficult to implement[0].

But a well-designed symbolic UX can be leaps and bounds more effective than text.

In some contexts.

Basically, YMMV.

The main issue with text, is that is assumes that:

1) Everybody can read, and

B) Everybody is on the same page.

In any given day, I notice written signs everywhere. But the really important stuff tends to be done symbolically.

Notably, caution/danger signs and other warnings.

Road signs are almost always text, but the same thing I just mentioned, applies to important cautionary road signs. You can assume that anyone driving can read (written road test), so why use icons?

That's because we can process symbols much more quickly and effectively than text. A well-designed icon can be instantly recognizable. Take, for example, the classic radiation or biohazard icons.

They still need "training" to properly interpret; but nothing like the level of education required to simply read (and understand) the word "BIOHAZARD."

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I have learned the hard way, not to get too creative, when presenting GUI. I've learned to use platform conventions, and ISO symbols[1], where possible; even if I am not that thrilled with the aesthetics.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...

[1] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/

This is not an inherent problem of text, but a problem of synchronous vs asynchronous communication. Round-trip latency of a phone call is much shorter than IM. But I'd say that speech and text still use the same medium (language), so it's not really an argument either way.

There is a strong opinion (which I share) that text coding is much more efficient than 'graphical' alternatives due to text flexibility and nice features ( easy compare, universal medium...)