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

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

#181

Post by goblin89 » Thu, May 10, 2012, 7:50 AM UTC

moocow01 wrote: post #126

The problem is that if we modernized most of our iconography, a heck of a lot of things won't be able to be represented simply with something distinctive enough. This is largely due to what I'll call the merging of things into the same form largely driven by computing. For example... Icon for a phone - rectangular screen Icon for a TV - rectangular screen Icon for a tablet - rectangular screen Icon for a camera - rec…

Not only that. We appear to be far better at learning the meaning of new unknown symbols than one would expect.

Anecdotal evidence: when I first encountered a floppy icon, its purpose wasn't obvious to me at all, despite I've already used a floppy before. See the Chinese writing example in this thread as well. Apparently, prior knowledge of the real-world object doesn't affect usability as much as other visual features of an icon.

This makes me believe that, in future,

1) younger generations won't have any trouble with icons that represent old things they'll never see;

2) icon design business is going to profit.

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

#182

Post by Produce » Thu, May 10, 2012, 8:16 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #105

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…

* ...because they're called folders, and we know how to use them?* Historically they were called directories , which I would love to see a return to from the wrong and infantilizing "folders".

I still call them directories. "Folders" are for toddlers who do not know the tao of unix. So are icons. Real men stare at text all day, eat with their hands and sleep when they're dead. The funny/sad part is that I'm half serious with these statements.

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

#183

Post by __alexs » Thu, May 10, 2012, 8:22 AM UTC

jreeve wrote: post #146

shanselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I suspect there is nothing we can replace it with. A TV with rabbit ears will always be a TV - perhaps a hundred years from now?

This reminds me very much of how the genesis of ideographic writing (such as Chinese characters) was related to me. I'm not at all certain that it is correct, but gist of it was that these forms of writing start with illustrations but gradually become encoded over time.

I quite like the idea of doing an app where all the icons are Chinese ideographs with native language tooltips and descriptions.

It would be a little like living in the Firefly universe but with more iPhones.

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

#184

Post by stretchwithme » Thu, May 10, 2012, 8:35 AM UTC

We started using horsepower to describe how much power an engine has and that has nothing to do with horses. And last I heard, many of us are still measuring things in feet.

Conventions hang on for generations because speaking a common language is more important than being up to date.

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

#185

Post by drewmclellan » Thu, May 10, 2012, 8:50 AM UTC

What's really interesting is that a lot of these rudiments (save, open, copy, paste, print) simply do not require icons in modern software.

I can't remember the last time I saw a save icon in any of the software I use. Not because saving has gone away, but because it's so fundamental to document-based applications that it doesn't need a dedicated button to call it out, and having one just wastes space. Saving isn't special functionality requiring an icon - you either use File>Save, or Cmd/Ctrl-S, or even just close the document and follow the prompt to save.

Copy, paste, open, these things don't need to take up valuable interface space as if they're some novelty functionality that uses must carefully be introduced to. We don't need a new save icon, because we don't need a save icon at all.

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

#186

Post by rufus_t » Thu, May 10, 2012, 8:58 AM UTC

shanselman wrote: post #141

bdunbar wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which I would love to see a return to from the wrong and infantilizing "folders". Probably too late. I work with nice guys, progammers in their late 20s, mid-30s, who have only ever known those as 'folders'. By convention at work if it's on a unix-y OS it's a directory, if Windows it's a folder. It's just easier that way.

Good distinction. I hear Mac folks uses both, usually depending on where they started.

I use both myself, depending on whether I'm using the mouse or a terminal, i.e. I "open a folder" but "list a directory". I've heard others do the same.

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

#187

Post by jeffool » Thu, May 10, 2012, 9:03 AM UTC

grkvlt wrote: post #179

LyleK wrote: post #68

Why do we even have a save icon function anymore anyway? Just to torture people who forgot to save their file? Google Docs doesn't have a save button because it is saving all the time . Why would you not want to save what you are doing? Why is not saving the default? (Alan Cooper made this argument in About Face in 1995.) Also, if you want to talk about outdated terminology, theres "disk" and "drive". These are being…

> Why would you not want to save what you are doing? Because the document is public, and you don't want work-in-progress to be shared until it is complete?

Don't publicly share the document until it's finished?

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

#188

Post by zerostar07 » Thu, May 10, 2012, 9:03 AM UTC

That's not something limited to computers or technology. Many entities are represented with an icon of the first or first popular iteration of am item. A train has smoke, lights are bulbs, authors use feather pens etc.

One could argue that it's actually faster to parse words than icons sometimes (don't know what traffic sign planners would think about that)

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

#189

Post by drewmclellan » Thu, May 10, 2012, 9:10 AM UTC

shanselman wrote: post #142

gbeech wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Same goes for the clipboard– hell if I know why MS would use that icon for paste, but in no other software that I can think of is that normal. That's easy. When you copy something you place it onto the clipboard, when you past it you are pulling a copy off the clipboard.

I remember some instances of paste being an icon of an actual jar of paste.

I'm 32, and I'm not completely sure what an actual jar of paste is. I've certainly never seen one. Logically, I'm presuming it's used as a paper adhesive (like wallpaper paste). I'd use the verb "to glue".

So "copy and paste" or "copy and glue". How does pasting go with copying? I copy something to the clipboard (...whatever) and then copy it from the clipboard to my document. How is that like gluing something? It really makes no sense.

And then I remember cutting. "Cut and paste" makes more sense. You might cut something out of a magazine and glue it onto a collage. Okay.

But the point is that none of this matters. "Paste" is a new word that means to copy something from your "clipboard" to the current location. It's not a metaphor anymore, it's a thing in its own right. A new definition for an old word.

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

#190

Post by slavak » Thu, May 10, 2012, 9:18 AM UTC

I think some of those are pushing it quite a bit...

Printed books aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable future (and I'm pretty sure all young people know what they are, even if they're not really into reading); the (Exchange-connected VoIP) phone on my desk at the office still has a handset shaped exactly like the icon; and what kind of magical sci-fi world does the author live in where no mechanical device requires gears any more, or where wrenches aren't necessary for basic home repairs?