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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

#301

Post by swiftcoder »

carlosjobim wrote: post #264
swiftcoder wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why in the world would colors discomfort you if you can't discern between them? Because pretty much as soon as one starts colour coding items in the UI, people start using the specific colours to encode meaning. If your UI requires someone to discern between the red and green versions of the same icon in your UI twice, congrats, you just lost 8% of male users! > Would a pedestrian traffic light be better if it wasn…

With that line of reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that all graphical elements of an interface should be removed, as the blind cannot see icons. > If your UI requires someone to discern between the red and green versions of the same icon Color coding has never been about this, only when implemented wrongly. It is just an extra differentiator for GUI elements which are already differentiated by icon shape and tex…

> Color coding... is just an extra differentiator for GUI elements which are already differentiated by icon shape and text labels.

In principle, I agree, but I do not believe I have ever used a software package that follows this philosophy. In practice, once you give people a tool, they are inclined to use it, and most projects only try and address accessibility concerns post-ship

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#303

Post by crazygringo »

troupo wrote: post #297
crazygringo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

You don't need to use language like "moron". It doesn't help the conversation and it's not appropriate. Trying to convince people you are right because you think other people are less intelligent is generally not a strategy that works.

And yes, all of the icons you are describing and linked to can be drawn. I even described these types of combinations myself. The point you're missing is that they are nearly impossible to visually distinguish at a quick glance. When I look at your first link, I just see a ton of icons that look like variations on a grid. They're difficult to decipher. You have to stop and think about what they actually mean and hope you don't make a mistake.

I think you're missing the purpose of menu item icons. They are not too distinguish every single item. That's what the text is for. They are to help identify either the basic type of verb or the basic type of noun or adjective at a glance. Without having to think about it. Which is why it's a feature, not a bug, even when multiple many items share the same icon if they perform the same action. At a glance, you can see that all of the plus icons mean insert something and all of the trashcan icons mean to delete something, and then you look at the text to see what is being inserted or deleted. Trying to cram all of that information into a tiny icon is bad design because it makes it slower to figure out the right item, not faster.

Design is full of these kinds of trade-offs. These trade-offs are the kinds of things you learn when you study design, and a huge part of graphic design is getting the trade-offs right in a given context.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#304

Post by praestigiare »

One thing that I think is demonstrated in the Safari "file" menu, the most common things you might need under that menu* have icons, which means you can scan to them very quickly.

* Note here that most common things you need under the menu are not the same as the most commonly used commands. New tab and new window are surely the most commonly used commands, but those you would almost never go to the menu for.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#305

Post by mopsi »

hypercube33 wrote: post #266
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 hate the monotone ones - I get it, its easy to tick the box that they are colorblind safe or whatever, and its modern design, but man the colors really help me identify what the hell I'm going at in the menu. Brown thingy (clipboard) is copy, black square is save. I'm a simple creature.

Same. Most people identify a blob of color far earlier than they distinguish one monochrome shape from another.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#307

Post by immibis »

wolpoli wrote: post #147
alextingle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat, monochrome icons might look nice, but they are only useful if used sparingly. If you're going to use many icons, then they need to be visually distinctive. That means ditching the flat designs, and embracing colour again.

Color icons needs to done twice - once for light mode and again for dark mode. It is the reason for removing colors and shadings from all icons.

We don't need light mode and dark mode if we just set our monitor brightness correctly.

It seems some monitors now assume dark mode - only the very lowest brightness setting isn't blinding.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#308

Post by immibis »

michaelevensen wrote: post #175

Designer here. I agree that sometimes there is an over-emphasis of sticking to the rule of icon - title (if it's already been defined) and finding icons for features that are very hard to describe through a simple pictogram, thus leading to non-helpful visual cues for menus and menu items. But, icons to me has never been about being a perfect encapsulation of the meaning of the feature, it's more of a visual anchor,…

If you have an icon next to every entry and they all look the same on first glance, you don't have visual anchors.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#309

Post by concinds »

arcbyte wrote: post #259
concinds wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also makes me think about the classic Save icon: the floppy disk. That was certainly descriptive at its origination, but is it still so? This is a pet peeve of mine and it feels like some cargo cult within the UI design "field". There's nothing wrong with the floppy icon. It's perfectly fine. Even if someone doesn't get it, the consistency of its use across apps is enough for its meaning to be clear, which is wh…

Before I read the blog post I would have agreed with you. It's pervasive, well understood, and the meaning is clear which you point out is what really matters. But after reading the article I find myself asking if that's really true? I'm doubting it now. Certainly, the Floppy disk icon is clear to computer users who experienced at least a few years of the 90's or early 2000's. That's becoming less and less a percenta…

The human brain works with nonrepresentative shapes perfectly fine, otherwise companies wouldn't emphasize logos so much, often without even their actual name next to the logo.

Again, you don't even need to know what a floppy is or that it exists; its consistency and omnipresence, alongside the "Save" label most of the time, is enough to create meaning, such that most people will recognize it without the label.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#310

Post by sevensor »

20k wrote: post #183
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…

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…

So do I want the button with the three horizontal lines, three horizontal dots, three vertical dots, nine dots arranged in a grid, the point-down triangle, or the point-right chevron? Generally these convey no information and I have to try each one to find the option I want. If it exists.
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