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Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#121

Post by notpushkin »

wpm wrote: post #65
Kwpolska wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icons in menus do follow the 2025 HIG: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... The author is criticising 2025 macOS for not following the 2005 HIG. This is not reasonable criticism, the HIG are not set in stone and they have changed many times in the past 20 years.

And if you go do the work of tracking down newer HIG versions, they say the exact same thing. 2014: "Avoid displaying an icon for every menu item. If you include icons in your menus, include them only for menu items for which they add significant value. A menu that includes too many icons (or poorly designed ones) can appear cluttered and be hard to read." Newer versions seem to have escaped being properly archived a…

2020 was linked in another thread here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201027235952/https://developer...

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#122

Post by SkyPuncher »

jFriedensreich wrote: post #120

i hope this is a fringe opinion as im usually putting icons on every item and found it leads to reduced mental overload and fast item selections, for complex menus i would even go so far as making it colored to more senses can be used. the icons have to be meaningful though, apples guidelines specifically mention arbitrary icons not icons at all

I want icons everywhere. They can literally be meaningless but it’s way way easier to find “2nd item in matching icon set” than it is to read every item in a list.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#123

Post by notpushkin »

shadowgovt wrote: post #70

Former UI guy at Google here. The explanation for why they do it is pretty simple: localization hinting. From country to country, the text will change but the icon pictures won't. So if you find some how-tos or guidance online that has screenshots but wasn't made in your language, you can still follow along by lining up the icons. There are other reasons too but that's a big one.

You don’t have to have icons for every menu item for this to work though. One copy icon is enough for the whole block.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#124

Post by ndespres »

I agree with the author. I understand many of the reasons others give here for why icons could be beneficial- localization, literacy, vision issues, etc. all are great reasons to supplement text with icons, theoretically. But I disagree that these icons, I mean those shown as examples in the Apple menu, Safari menu, or Google Docs menus- actually convey anything useful and really do prove the authors point that they’re poorly implemented.

I realize it may be generational and privilege based, as I can read English and have a good deal of computer literacy. To my eyes the icon trend of flat, minimal icons paradoxically ask a user to possess a higher degree of computer fluency to successfully parse the artistic intent of the icon and map it to its function. When these icons don’t accurately convey their function (the Paste icon is a blank clipboard. What’s that do?) and when the design language is inconsistent within the same application and OS (do cogs mean Preferences? Services? you’re building a very confusing world for most of the user group types you claim to be helping.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#125

Post by dmayle »

0manrho wrote: post #43

From an accessibility/localization stand point, icons+text everywhere seems to be ideal. Also, I disagree with: > This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space” Sure, that does technically happen, but is in no way preventative or mutually exclusive with the follow on thought: > Does ... the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt…

I used to manage a team working on the news feed at Facebook (main page).

We did extensive experimentation, and later user studies to find out that there are roughly three classes of people:

1) Those that use interface items with text 2) Those that use interface items with icons 3) Those that use interface items with both text and icons.

I forget details on the user research, but the mental model I walked away with this that these items increase "legibility" for people, and by leaving either off, you make that element harder to use.

If you want an interface that is truly usable, you should strive to use both wherever possible, and ideally when not, try to save in ways that reduce the mental load less (e.g. grouping interface by theme, and cutting elements from only some of the elements in that theme, to so that some of the extra "legibility" carries over from other elements in the group)

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#126

Post by pjot »

ndespres wrote: post #124

I agree with the author. I understand many of the reasons others give here for why icons could be beneficial- localization, literacy, vision issues, etc. all are great reasons to supplement text with icons, theoretically. But I disagree that these icons, I mean those shown as examples in the Apple menu, Safari menu, or Google Docs menus- actually convey anything useful and really do prove the authors point that they’…

Similar is the save icon, though for a different reason. It conveys its function well, but one first needs to know what a floppy disk even is!

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#127

Post by concinds »

arcbyte wrote: post #2

This a really interesting and persuasive read for me. I've been thinking about this topic as part of brainstorming a simple design system and I had come to the conclusion that the inconsistency of not having icons for every menu item was a big annoyance. After seeing how descriptive the icons are in older menu examples compared to the abstract blobs in newer menus, I have to admit I might be wrong. At the very least,…

> It also makes me think about the classic Save icon: the floppy disk. That was certainly descriptive at its origination, but is it still so?

This is a pet peeve of mine and it feels like some cargo cult within the UI design "field". There's nothing wrong with the floppy icon. It's perfectly fine. Even if someone doesn't get it, the consistency of its use across apps is enough for its meaning to be clear, which is what really matters.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#128

Post by concinds »

nmilo wrote: post #15
DeathRay2K wrote: post #4

I changed the UX in my mobile app from text only to icon + text by default in menus, buttons, and links. There are several reasons I made the switch, but the primary reason is that it makes it easier to build a kind of muscle memory for navigating and performing particular actions. In essence, the text is there for new users and the icons are there for experienced users.

+1. I love icons, just be consistent. That MacOS example is egregious

Other built-in Tahoe apps have more consistent indentations and far more icons. The Safari team (not the WebKit team, the people building the app wrapping it) just phoned it in with the menu icons. They also somehow disabled the Tahoe window opening animation.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#129

Post by concinds »

jFriedensreich wrote: post #120

i hope this is a fringe opinion as im usually putting icons on every item and found it leads to reduced mental overload and fast item selections, for complex menus i would even go so far as making it colored to more senses can be used. the icons have to be meaningful though, apples guidelines specifically mention arbitrary icons not icons at all

I hope so too, and I agree on the colored icons for pro apps. Mac user for 20 years, also using Windows on and off, and I've always liked the menu icons on Windows. A move away from minimalism that makes sense. The fact that they're not cargo-culting their 20 year old HIG is promising, really.

But they really should keep the indentations consistent, they're increasing cognitive load for no reason by not doing that.

I also like the hotkeys or whatever (the underlined letter in menu items and dialog box buttons), and maybe that is a fringe opinion among Apple users.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#130

Post by qwertytyyuu »

pjot wrote: post #126
ndespres wrote: post #124

I agree with the author. I understand many of the reasons others give here for why icons could be beneficial- localization, literacy, vision issues, etc. all are great reasons to supplement text with icons, theoretically. But I disagree that these icons, I mean those shown as examples in the Apple menu, Safari menu, or Google Docs menus- actually convey anything useful and really do prove the authors point that they’…

Similar is the save icon, though for a different reason. It conveys its function well, but one first needs to know what a floppy disk even is!

Nah, people especially younger ones associate the floppy disk with the save button
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