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Laundry symbols make no sense

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Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#181

Post by itisit »

Apreche wrote: post #21

I just have a symbol guide printed out and laminated next to the laundry machine. After referencing it enough times eventually you memorize it. No big deal.

I can totally get behind the value of a design exercise in revisiting popular symbols, but one thing I rarely (and unfortunately) see is an admission that the originals are better. Tags wear out and tag print size varies, which the originals account for in their simple distinguishable shapes. And the learning curve is negligible, as you allude to.

This post reminds me of when a junior dev refactors a bit of code that they now find to be well-crafted and intelligible simply because it came from their own mind. However, the result is often just as esoteric and convoluted, or it's even worse!

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#182

Post by mongol »

moralestapia wrote: post #178

OP has a point but the alternatives he provides are a bit worse from my perspective. Also, why not putting the old and new icons side by side? For an UX designer that is policing on others, the animated GIF that you can't control with a fast transition was a very poor choice.

Yes that ruins his entire credibility.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#183

Post by butz »

I'm adding custom NFC tags to all my laundry with encoded washing instructions, color and material data. Placing laundry in "smart" basket will read all data from them (this part is currently more involved, as you need to scan each article of clothing separately), and send instructions to washing machine for most optimal program (that's a problem too, as I do not own "smart" washing machine, yet). If there are some outliers, e.g. black shirt in otherwise white-ish laundry - I will be informed to remove it, for best results.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#184

Post by robonerd »

The idea of using these symbols instead of printed English is that not everybody speaks English, yes? Well, I don't speak Spanish, but I think if all of these symbols were replaced with printed Spanish words, it would be more useful to me than any of these symbols. I'd figure out what it meant with greater ease than these symbols; at the very least I would be able to look up the meaning.

And if you're going to have the symbols and printed text, you might as well omit the symbols entirely. I think both sets of symbols are worthless. I could probably guess what some of them mean if my life depended on it, but I'm not going to. Deciphering symbols is a waste of my time. At least if printed Spanish were used, puzzling out the meaning would actually enrich my life. The symbols are worthless noise and I don't want their meaning wasting space in my brain.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#185

Post by themitigating »

b112 wrote: post #78
detritus wrote: post #9

Within a second of seeing the 'improved' ones I spot what is, to my mind at least, an immediate failure - the detail resolution is far too small. It doesn't account for the printing limitations on small fabric tags, never mind the ability of old fogeys such as myself to be able to squint that hard and actually read them. I have no idea even looking on my screen here what the difference between the first three is supp…

I really find the idea that "having to know, or lookup stuff", as a problem, offensive. Laundry is literally filled with things to know, outside of these symbols. Household tasks are. I don't see labels on bleech bottles, saying not to mix it with vinegar or you could die. Yet people have done that in the wash, so why not start there? Here's what each sane person should do, who actually takes time to look at tags. (a…

Let's say that you have a set of symbols and 30% of the people who view them are able to derive their meaning without research. Why not try to increase that number? What's the downsides excluding the time making the new symbols.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#187

Post by robonerd »

marcosdumay wrote: post #94
AdamH12113 wrote: post #36

I have always found laundry symbols confusing. I agree with other comments that this proposed replacement has too many problems to be acceptable, but surely someone can do better than "crossed-out triangle", "underlined water cup", "Cylon wearing a jaunty cap", and my personal favorite, "literally just a circle". Weird fact: Despite having been around for decades, laundry symbols have not been assigned Unicode code p…

There's nothing wrong with the symbols. Your washing machine is the one that should have a printed table of them somewhere. Take a look on those symbols: "A", "B", "C". A triangle with the basis moved up, two circles with a straight side, and an open circumference arc. They were abstract into complete meaningless, yet they are great for their use-case.

> Your washing machine is the one that should have a printed table of them somewhere.

Neither of my laundry machines have any symbols on their control panels, only printed English. The only symbols I can find on them are the Explosion, Fire, and Shock warning stickers inside the rim of the doors.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#188

Post by robonerd »

masklinn wrote: post #127
jrochkind1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My US market washing machine has settings for "hot", "warm", and "cold", but if there's a way to set temperature to a number, it is not intuitive and I am not aware of it (it may exist this is a 'digital' machine!). If it did have a way to set a wash temp to an arbitrary number, it would presumably be in F not C! I think this is typical for US washing machines? Do (eg) European washing machines instead typically have…

> My US market washing machine has settings for "hot", "warm", and "cold" What the hell? That’s barbaric. > Do (eg) European washing machines instead typically have you set wash temp to an arbitrary number of °C? Not arbitrary except possibly on high-end machines but even entry-level stuff have temp settings for the usual stuff: cold (whatever’s out the tap), 30, 40, 60, 90.

How do you ever decide whether a load of laundry needs 30 or 40? Do you sum up all the laundry labels on each item of clothing then take the average?

Personally, I leave my machine set to hot for everything. Hot water is what I use for washing in my dish washer, in my sink, in my shower.. hot water is for washing. That's how I see it.

Re: Laundry symbols make no sense

#189

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #125
happytoexplain wrote: post #54

Wow! The new icons have unacceptably small details, and I'm not sure how that's not obvious to even non-designers. And yet the author claims their set puts usability in front of beauty, as opposed to the originals ? I don't usually write this negatively, but this really provoked an emotional reaction in me. Self-evidence is only one desirable quality of iconography, and it is not the most important one. Legibility is…

> If I can't read the details, or they easily wear off or fade, then it doesn't matter how self-describing they are. You can reverse this too. If I never understand what they mean, it doesn’t matter that I can still read them. I mean, I agree there’s too many hard to read details, but the originals are absolutely impenetrable.

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