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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

#291

Post by sundarurfriend »

ACCount37 wrote: post #223
20k wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform. It lets you skip reading all the text when you're familiar with a dialogue, and you can short circuit what you need to click on without having to read That's the reason why pictographic additions are so useful. Its the reason why we dis…

This. If I'm out looking for a "Save" button, I'm going to pattern match "ancient disk icon" without even thinking about it. It's also the reason why some menu entries get icons and others don't. If the icon doesn't convey information by itself (like a "move to top" icon example), then it's there as a visual anchor - and you don't really need to have 4 of the same "delete" icon if a menu has 4 different "delete" opti…

> "ancient disk icon"

Even though floppy disks were a bit before my time and I rarely ever used them, seeing them be called ancient disk makes me wanna find the nearest coffin and just go lie down. :D

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#292

Post by cs02rm0 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #24

Not sure I agree. It's much easier for me to find the link icon than "Insert Link" in the Google Docs example. It's seem pretty close to a standard icon so, for me at least, it's helpful to find it. Same wit some of the others like increase indent, decrease indent, left, right, center justification, and lots of others. I can also be helpful for non-English (or non-language of your choice) when you haven't had time to…

With apologies to our American friends, Jeremy Clarkson had a take on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kXUbwngB4

Somewhere in there, I think he does have a point.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#293

Post by mrcino »

The UI/UX design is not about standards and guidelines but about what the manager currently likes. There is no discipline because senior managers don't care until Excel cells turn red.

Steve Jobs was forcing design discipline across Apple products with furious determination because he actually cared.

That's how it ends, everything becomes an unmanageable, constantly changing mess because every manager likes something else and big firms are rotating their personnel every 3 years.

Because the above products of the same company are losing cohesion and consistency even if they are in the same product line which results in bad UX.

Design departments are not disciplined enough...

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#294

Post by omnimus »

troupo wrote: post #270
omnimus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't actually matter that much what the icon is. It's impossible to creat icons people would fully understand - otherwise you wouldn't need a label at all. The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app). There are other factors like consistent placement that can help. This icon approach is good especially if you have…

> The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app). I wrote it in a different comment elsewhere: this is exactly why you don't want icons on every menu item. When everything tries to be stand out, nothing does. It's much easier to distinguish groups and "it's the third item below the icon" than "out of these identical lookin…

Sure! I agree. My comment above probably seems like i think this new Apple design direction is good. I don't. Tahoe seems like amateur hour.

What i was mainly saying is that the icon does not have to describe the label for it to be effective. That doesn't mean that usage/quality of the icon suddenly doesn't matter.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#295

Post by woobar »

rayiner wrote: post #258
20k wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform. It lets you skip reading all the text when you're familiar with a dialogue, and you can short circuit what you need to click on without having to read That's the reason why pictographic additions are so useful. Its the reason why we dis…

> Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform No you can’t.

Look at the traffic signs. You have very limited time to read the sign. That's the reason they have distinct patterns and rarely (except in USA) rely on blocks of text.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#296

Post by omnimus »

ndespres wrote: post #288
omnimus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't actually matter that much what the icon is. It's impossible to creat icons people would fully understand - otherwise you wouldn't need a label at all. The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app). There are other factors like consistent placement that can help. This icon approach is good especially if you have…

Others have brought up the Office 97 style for good reason. Everything has an icon, on an icon toolbar. Every command can also be on a file menu but most of them there don’t have an icon. The ones that do are special or intended to draw your attention. And there’s a consistent metaphor: for example the web browser is represented by a globe for the world wide web. So the “hyperlink” function is a globe with a chain. T…

Sure. There are also icons that are plain flat and don't use metaphor and work great. Play, share, hamburger, bluetooth, power... i am sure there are more. Icons are more about familiarity than anything.

I assume you were very familiar with Office 97. I can tell you people born in 97 are probably not. High chance they might not like and understand the icons because they aren't familiar with them.

It's like when everybody wants to design logo as unforgettable as Nike. But in reality anything people see 20 times a day people will remember.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#297

Post by troupo »

crazygringo wrote: post #276
troupo wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's laziness and bad design. It's the most generic trash icon from the most generic icon set. Same with "add row above/below" or the completely distinct action Create Filter/Filter by cell value. They can be trivially improved with about 1 millisecond of conscious thought. Especially given the fact that these actions have been around in office software for literal decades , and more often than not with their own…

I don't know how they can be trivially improved. I vaguely recall seeing some product with toolbar icons that attempted to depict a cell as part of a row, or column, with an "x" in the corner to indicate delete. I could never decipher them. It was all too small. Plus the "x" looked just like the "+" at a glance since it was so small. Even though every icon was distinct and meaningful, each icon was also ultimately a…

> It's actually really hard and there's a good reason they choose not to.

No. No, there's no good reason. Google is institutionally incapable of making good designs. Forget good, they can't make sensible designs.

So they whipped out the most generic icon set. Typed "delete" or "add" or "filter" and chose the first icon that popped up for all actions.

Top to bottom:

- Insert column before. left arrow, column (three stacked squares), green plus sign

- Insert row after: green plus sign (in the same position as previous item), row (three squares in a row), arrow down

- Insert cells. Doesn't need an icon, since it's already in the obvious insert group. Or: a single square, green plus sign

-------

- Delete column: column, red cross

- Delete row: row, red cross

- Delete cells: doesn't need an icon. Or: single square, red cross

--------

- Create a filter. Same filter icon with a green plus. This one is so obvious, that only a moron could think it's hard, or there's some reason they didn't do it.

- Filter by cell value. Same icon, or better still a square with filter because there are other filters elsewhere.

---

And that's before we actually ask people to think about the designs: https://www.flaticon.com/packs/tables-82 or https://www.flaticon.com/packs/spreadsheet or https://www.flaticon.com/packs/ecommerce-266

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#298

Post by SmarsJerry »

hypercube33 wrote: post #267
vasco wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The monotone ones in Windows 11 that jump around in order or menu position (I think both of these have been addressed in 24h2 or something?) where they hop to the top or bottom of the menu or dont show so the order is wrong if they are disabled for some object are insanely bad UX. I say this because I agree, the pictogram icon is much easier for me to find. I also like having a word there though, if they change the p…

There was a point where a significant amount of menus in windows and office used only icons. It made it basically unusable for anyone over 60.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#299

Post by emeril »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #177
jameshart wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely where I would this pattern - MS Office 97’s customizable toolbars necessitated this model where every single thing you could do in the application had an icon. It then got copied into Visual Studio, where making all of the thousands of things you could do and put into custom toolbars or menus have visually meaningful icons was clearly an impossible task, but it didn’t stop Microsoft trying. I assum…

I still regard Office '97 as the best UI it ever had. I spent a lot of time inside it, including a couple of years at a bank reconciling corporate actions before I got my first programming job. The ribbon version was awful in comparison.

2003 was the best/final iteration of it - I still miss old excel

new excel is just garbage instead in virtually every way

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#300

Post by _kidlike »

putting aside accessibility, I believe that the usefulness of icons boils down to brain efficiency.

Considering that the brain has hard-wired neurons (since birth) to automatically count/recognize up to 3 objects, we need some icons as anchor points. With emphasis on some.

You can have max of 3 icons in a row, and a max distance of 6 items without icons.

Then you can VERY quickly find any menu item, by doing "+/-3 from X anchor" math, which your brain does extremely efficiently.

Further, this means that an action is represented by a relative path (e. g. save as = 1 down from the save icon). This further helps the brain to store these associations, because it's also extremely efficient at storing relative paths. So, long time users automatically become more and more efficient at using your software.

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