Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#111

Post by aufreak3 » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:57 AM UTC

evoxed wrote: post #32

Around halfway through I jotted down a few thoughts. I like and appreciate people thinking about this sort of thing however, so I'm not saying any of this to offend. > I don't see any reason that we couldn't be storing our files in abstract squares rather than folders in the sky. ...because they're called folders, and we know how to use them? If I said, "Here, have a square," is your first instinct really to think oh…

And then there is the powerful and ancient weapon - the arrow. When was the last time arrows had heads like this ->? What would we substitute them with in our flow charts and graphs (the nodes/edges kind)? What would we use instead to point people to restrooms? Haskell would be deprived of a major theoretical weapon, not to mention a notational glue of its famous type system (a -> b is the type of a function that takes type a value and yields type b value).

Actually the post points out something interesting - we are in the midst of a transformation from a pictorial communication system to an ideographic language where the connection between symbol and signified becomes arbitrary. Nothing wrong with that "arbitrariness", but the visual language continues to evolve - maybe we'll see a paper clip icon even in "Avengers"-like interfaces for this reason.

(edit: fixed typos)

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#112

Post by guynamedloren » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:03 AM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #41

Fun read. However, if the suggestion is that we force ourselves to constantly update iconography because the metaphors are outdated, I don't agree. Sailors still say "knots", but I bet young ones don't all know why. People say "breadboard" all of the time when building electronics. Similarly, the very letters of our language evolved out of symbols that meant something to some humans long ago, just as words have an et…

> Mail on my Mac is represented by a postage stamp. I never realized that until I just analyzed it. Good icons are subconscious like that.

Honestly? I don't believe you. The postage stamp is in no way subtle - in fact, it couldn't be more obvious.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#113

Post by mietek » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:03 AM UTC

batista wrote: post #13

MCompeau wrote: post #7

This discourse goes beyond the anachronistic references indicated by these icons and calls into question our entire system of interface metaphors. At one point in time imagining the information stored on your computer as a system of "files" and "folders" was pivotal in transitioning a society from the physical world to the digital one. Now that the transition is largely complete and many people are coming of age who…

> Now that the transition is largely complete and many people are coming of age who have never known a world without computers, its time to move beyond anachronistic metaphors. They might have been metaphors once, now they are idioms. The people who "have never known a world without computers" have also never known a world where there weren't filesystem folders and files.

iOS devices mostly does away with both concepts, and I hear they've sold a few.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#114

Post by blake8086 » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:08 AM UTC

nathanbarry wrote: post #3

The floppy disk icon has always frustrated me. Though I still haven't seen a great replacement. Would love to see this list with more thoughtful options to use instead.

It's because "saving" is an activity that exists only to appease computer architecture choices. It's not a natural thing to do at all.

A more humanistic approach would be to save versioned history of everything you do and then "save" by marking points in time as versions you would like to share with other people or systems.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#115

Post by excuse-me » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:10 AM UTC

radley wrote: post #91

DavidAbrams wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and you have supposed "leaders" like Apple that just give up and stop trying. Apple widely just throws up a button with a "gear" on it when they're too lazy to organize functions properly. And there's no telling what the gear button will do. Even worse is the Easter-egg UIs that are becoming a widespread problem: There's no icon (or even control) at all until you accidentally roll the cursor over the area. WTF?…

Not sure what the gear is you mention, but I can't think of another company that has Apple's drive for intuitive UI, which is the fundamental purpose of icons. In contrast, HN is a text-dominant application designed for text-dominant users...

Innovative doesn't mean intuitive - why is pinch zoom? Wouldn't it be more intuitive for pinch to close an app - after all you pinch things closed ?

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#116

Post by philwelch » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:13 AM UTC

hoov wrote: post #73

I'm not sure that I agree with the "Photography" examples. Even for people who haven't seen actual Polaroid cameras, the icon is clearly some sort of camera. The author finishes his argument with a quote from a recent pop song, which probably means that Polaroid pictures aren't an extremely obscure reference. Also, I bet that Instagram's early adopters know exactly what Polaroid cameras are, and the reference isn't l…

> The author finishes his argument with a quote from a recent pop song

"Hey Ya!" was released in 2003, nine years ago, and the exact same year that Dell finally removed floppy drives from its computers.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#117

Post by excuse-me » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

DavidAbrams wrote: post #46

acheron wrote: post #40

There's a good article to be written on this subject, but this isn't it. "folders": we can go back to "directories" if you'd like. It's still what I say most of the time. "wrenches/screwdrivers/gears": This was the most baffling one. Who's never used a screwdriver? And he says it as if it's obvious. "phone": 75% of the US still has a landline (as of a year ago anyway), so I find "you haven't used this in 20 years" to…

And he missed the "film" icon for movies. I think about this one when I see the stylized movie-chain trailers in theaters: What percentage of the audience even knows what that strip is supposed to be?

Do directors still say cut? Or do they now shout fclose() at the end of a scene?

If it's a really good take - do they say that's "a burn to disk" - instead of a print?

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#118

Post by sklinger » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:16 AM UTC

qntm wrote: post #83

Not that the floppy disk being used as a Save icon was actually floppy, of course.

You mean, except for the disk part of the floppy disk, of course.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#119

Post by vibrunazo » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:18 AM UTC

libria wrote: post #101

brc wrote: post #55

This goes back a lot further than computer icons. Road signs for railway crossings still show steam trains. Men/Women signs for toilets show women in skirts that nobody wears, on images that hardly resemble people at all. My car has a snowflake for the AC button, even though snow doesn't come out of the vents when you switch it on. Interestingly, signs that ban music players in certain areas now look like Gen 1 iPods…

People have made hay about the save/floppy icon for some time. This is the 1st time I've ever realized where the term `radio button`. I've successfully used them countless times and none of my coworkers/clients has ever been confused by the term. It demonstrates to me that it doesn't matter what the icon is. What matters is convention. Nobody has to ever see the original as long as there is universal acceptance about…

Same here, I just learned why the radio buttons were called radio buttons with this article. I had never seen them, but never had a problem with them.

Also, as a non native english speaker, I learned several words in english by programming. I remember seeing the word "if" out of a programming context for the first time, and I knew what it meant because I remembered of c++. :)

So yes, convention is more important. People will learn the convention and won't know why. Just like we don't know the exact etymology of every word, but we still can communicate fine. And when we do find how each word or icon was originated, it's interesting, but we honestly could live without it.

Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

#120

Post by niels_olson » Thu, May 10, 2012, 2:27 AM UTC

evoxed wrote: post #32

Around halfway through I jotted down a few thoughts. I like and appreciate people thinking about this sort of thing however, so I'm not saying any of this to offend. > I don't see any reason that we couldn't be storing our files in abstract squares rather than folders in the sky. ...because they're called folders, and we know how to use them? If I said, "Here, have a square," is your first instinct really to think oh…

> Microphones For speech recognition

Until someone trumps the performance of condensor microphones in the studio, this form will remain a current and accepted form for speech input.