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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

#191

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

thiht wrote: post #174
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. One of first programs that put pictograms in menus was Microsoft Word. But the way Word did it was entirely different from what we do now. Microsoft Word had toolbars and their buttons, of course, were mostly pictorial. Toolbars could be turned on and off and users…

> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful

Classic Mac OS window headers had striped or dot patterns that were kind of similar to rugged parts of various physical tool handles. So they were both decorative in a way and informational: this is a part you can hold and drag around. A typical interface will have a lot of such parts that are both functional and decorative, so it will feel just right.

Purely decorative parts are also possible (and even desirable), but they should be personal. A set of colors chosen by the user, a background texture, a picture that the user keeps on the desktop and so on.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#192

Post by jasonvorhe »

drdeadringer wrote: post #71
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…

After my stroke 3 years ago, I find myself in a place meeting accessibility. So the icons are helpful. I cannot necessarily read the text.

Can you associate the symbols shown in the post with the text blurred out to their individual meaning?

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#193

Post by oracle2025 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #178
stanac wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10x10 monochrome icons I don't mind the size, but lack of colors is annoying. If common icons where color-coded, like green to save, blue to download/print/export, red to delete, UI would be friendlier to use.

> If common icons where color-coded... UI would be friendlier to use As a colour-blind person, this sounds like accessibility hell. Don't forget your UIs still need to be friendly in what amounts to monochrome

I think it is important to stress that both, color _and_ shape should be visible distinctive, and as you say it is important that the color palette is chosen in a way that even if the color does not stand out for a the color-blind person, the contrast stays visible.

Making everything monochrome is surly not more accessible, because there sure are people who find it easier to distinguish by color than shape.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#194

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

eviks wrote: post #158
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #143

Pictograms in the interface are not decoration. Their purpose is to convey information in limited space. (The information should be that could be conveyed this way.) Currently they are often used as decorations or these two uses are mixed up. This is a mistake. (It is interesting and saddening to see how years of UI research just went down the drain after Apple "resurrection". In my impression Apple was the first tha…

> Their purpose is to convey information in limited space. No, that's only one of their purposes. Another one is faster visual parsing of shape recognition instead of reading even if space is not an issue (just like with all of these menus, they waste so much space on padding they could fit command names 3 more times)

Right; but this is also information. The Civilization game used little pictures of wheat and shields, I think, to indicate the production levels. Here the pictures are better than numbers because they feel more like actual things and allow to express all the details we need. We understand smaller numbers differently, three vs five is not just arithmetical for us, it is more substantial to actually see three vs five items than a different shape of a digit.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#195

Post by kevin061 »

Very cool analysis, I never thought of that. I was actually in the camp of "icons everywhere" because it seemed inconsistent to have icons only sometimes, but I never stopped to look at indentation especially when mixing in checkmarks, thanks for sharing!

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#196

Post by Propelloni »

vasco wrote: post #155
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #143

Pictograms in the interface are not decoration. Their purpose is to convey information in limited space. (The information should be that could be conveyed this way.) Currently they are often used as decorations or these two uses are mixed up. This is a mistake. (It is interesting and saddening to see how years of UI research just went down the drain after Apple "resurrection". In my impression Apple was the first tha…

I disagree, pictures are easier to remember than words and I'm much faster (several hundred miliseconds) at quickly spotting an icon in the 12th place down a list and clicking it because I memorized it visually than reading the actual words. So icons make power users faster. It's not "clutter". Your argument about "don't use it for aesthetics" is ironic because you're making it because of aesthetics. For me it's abou…

Speak for yourself. I remember words. That disk icon stands for "Save". "Save" is what I remember. I also remember location, but the spatial component applies independent from icons or words.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#197

Post by 1718627440 »

layer8 wrote: post #38
PunchyHamster wrote: post #27

100% disagree. They make finding a group of commands very quickly and it's not like horizontal space in menu is at the premium

Maybe you misunderstood the author. They wrote: ‘ It’s not that I think menu items should never have icons. I think they can be incredibly useful. It’s more that I don’t like the idea of “give each menu item an icon” being the default approach. ’ The point is, if every item in a long menu has an icon, then they typically can’t all be very distinguishable and recognizable, and blur together visually. It creates more v…

Aren't the icons for the different save actions typically different? The save as typically has some idea of editing, like a pencil or an editing box, save all has multiple save icons behind each other.

First thing I found: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/step-/gtk-stock-icons2/ref... See the last row.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#198

Post by lloeki »

remyp wrote: post #19

Over the years I've noticed something unusual about myself: I don't even see these icons. My brain goes directly to the text. This applies to all visual material, but is most evident in printed advertising. Apparently other people notice the hot girl and the puppy and the fried chicken sandwich first. Meanwhile, I've already read all the fine print. No idea why I'm like this.

I used to notice and somewhat - but not solely - rely on icons, especially nice designed sets.

It seems though that a combination of samey-sameness (greyscale, shape, etc...) and the constant bombarding of attention-grabbing imagery (emoji, gif, ads...) has desensitised me from visual cues and I zero in on text instead now.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#199

Post by rohmanhakim »

I think the best approach is to separate between frequent and rare actions. Frequent actions like cut, copy, and paste usually have recognizable icons that allow people to scan them easily when in need. Rare actions should use text only to prevent noise. Having an icon (which is most likely not as recognizable as the frequent actions) won't help

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#200

Post by BaudouinVH »

thiht wrote: post #174
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. One of first programs that put pictograms in menus was Microsoft Word. But the way Word did it was entirely different from what we do now. Microsoft Word had toolbars and their buttons, of course, were mostly pictorial. Toolbars could be turned on and off and users…

> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful

I tend to follow the "no form without function" design philosophy. Your comment makes me rethink that. thanks
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