211–220 of 279 posts
That is not a floppy disk. It's a Save icon. See the difference?
"When things, signs or actions are freed from their respective ideas, concepts, essences, values, points of reference, origins and aims, they embark upon an endless process of self-reproduction. Yet things continue to function long after their ideas have disappeared, and they do so in total indifference to their own content. The paradoxical fact is that they function even better under these circumstances."
Jean Baudrillard from "The Transparency of Evil"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transparency-Evil-Extreme-Phenomen...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
* ...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".
Alright: I generally do call them directories. I grew up in UNIX. But we're talking about icons and UX here. Do you consider the "desktop" to be so infantilizing as well? 1: filesystem > directories > files 2: Desktop > Folders > Documents They're both models for (basically) the same thing. The technical incorrectness of folder doesn't interfere with usage in real scenarios, unless you expect Average Joe to be struct…
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 However, if the suggestion is that we force ourselves to constantly update iconography because the metaphors are outdated, I don't agree.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.
In my app I just have the same little image of a CPU for everything - much more logical
I found it bizarre (and sad) that the author believes that a screwdriver and wrench are somehow only tools for old people, that 20-somethings would have never wielded one in their life?
And a little OT remark about the so called "dead tree format" - it helps hide the fact that e-books might actually be more harmful to the planet than "dead tree" ones (think carbon imprint).
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.
That is not a floppy disk. It's a Save icon. See the difference?
Exactly as radley says. The rectangle in my quote here means '[send] email' (whic itself is anachronistic; emessage?).
To me, icons indicating actions (save, print, etc) work well when they depict (wholly or partly) a physical object that is obviously used to enact that action. I assume that this is because our visual cortex is tuned to recognise physical objects that do actions, not visual representations of actions themselves. We see a depiction of a hammer and know that its for driving nails, but its hard to depict driving nails without depicting a hammer. You could presumably do it (i'm not a graphic designer) but you're making people work harder to understand your depiction.
The problem is that sometimes changes in the world result in the recognisable physical object no-longer being recognisable and/or physical.
This can happen we make an action abstract ("save to floppy" becomes "save to cloud storage"), virtualise an action ("pick up phone and talk" becomes "make skype call using laptop"), or merge a once-external object into a multi-function object ("save to floppy" becomes "save to internal disk"). (What others have I missed?)
I don't know what to do about this. You could use a logo or graphical device/convention to indicate actions (e.g. skype logo indicates make a voice call) but you're also increasing the cognitive load on the user of the interface and increasing visual clutter.