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Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

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

#91

Post by radley »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #44
radley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UI designers are constantly forced to come up with new icons for crazy new features. It's a common practice to look for it on Google images, i.e. "Save Icon", and see if there's a common metaphor. If not, you look for similar use cases - something so that it's much quicker for users to grok what it does. That's the fundamental purpose after all. This was the problem with Google/Android's new icons as well as GitHub.…

Yep, and you have supposed "leaders" like Apple that just give up and stop trying. Apple widely just throws up a button with a "gear" on it when they're too lazy to organize functions properly. And there's no telling what the gear button will do. Even worse is the Easter-egg UIs that are becoming a widespread problem: There's no icon (or even control) at all until you accidentally roll the cursor over the area. WTF?…

Not sure what the gear is you mention, but I can't think of another company that has Apple's drive for intuitive UI, which is the fundamental purpose of icons.

In contrast, HN is a text-dominant application designed for text-dominant users...

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

#92

Post by ben1040 »

bazzargh wrote: post #76
brc wrote: post #55

This goes back a lot further than computer icons. Road signs for railway crossings still show steam trains. Men/Women signs for toilets show women in skirts that nobody wears, on images that hardly resemble people at all. My car has a snowflake for the AC button, even though snow doesn't come out of the vents when you switch it on. Interestingly, signs that ban music players in certain areas now look like Gen 1 iPods…

Indeed. This one used to mystify us on the UK driving test 25 years ago - way older than steam trains, and presumably anachronistic even when it was standardised: http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1848/PreviewComp/Su... It's not a UK sign. Most Europeans will recognize it, but I doubt it travels well, and even where it has local currency, many peoples grandparents won't remember these in real life.

As an American I had to use TinEye to find out that this image was of the Deutsche Post logo.

Then I realized it was a horn, and understood the connection. But only because I had once seen this faux historic mailbox in a SkyMall catalog or the like:

http://www.mailboxnet.com/townhouse_mailbox/mb500_townhouse_...

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

#93

Post by damoncali »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #39
radley wrote: post #14

Why do I have to still log-in to Facebook? Why can't I run Windows games on my iPad? Why can't I just talk to my computer like Star Trek? Programmers know why, but users don't. Same goes for icons: designers know what they're doing & why...

The question is why Facebook forces you to use an E-mail address as a user ID. Now THAT's amateur hour.

They don't.

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

#94

Post by Fuzzwah »

Reminds me of a Bucky Fuller rant about the "incorrect" words we still use every day even though we know more now than when they came into use.

His best example is "world wide", which he put forward should really be "world around" since we all now know that the earth is a globe and not flat.

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

#96

Post by brc »

bazzargh wrote: post #76
brc wrote: post #55

This goes back a lot further than computer icons. Road signs for railway crossings still show steam trains. Men/Women signs for toilets show women in skirts that nobody wears, on images that hardly resemble people at all. My car has a snowflake for the AC button, even though snow doesn't come out of the vents when you switch it on. Interestingly, signs that ban music players in certain areas now look like Gen 1 iPods…

Indeed. This one used to mystify us on the UK driving test 25 years ago - way older than steam trains, and presumably anachronistic even when it was standardised: http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1848/PreviewComp/Su... It's not a UK sign. Most Europeans will recognize it, but I doubt it travels well, and even where it has local currency, many peoples grandparents won't remember these in real life.

I recognised that one as a horn, but I had no idea what the connection to post is, and still don't. Just took it for one of those weird corporate logos that meant something to someone at some point but doesn't anymore.

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

#97

Post by billybob »

MCompeau wrote: post #7

This discourse goes beyond the anachronistic references indicated by these icons and calls into question our entire system of interface metaphors. At one point in time imagining the information stored on your computer as a system of "files" and "folders" was pivotal in transitioning a society from the physical world to the digital one. Now that the transition is largely complete and many people are coming of age who…

CS Lewis said that ""All language about things other than physical objects is necessarily metaphorical." I can't find the examples he gave, but from your sentence: we must "discover new means of interaction that take advantage..."

"Discover" is made of "dis-cover", meaning "remove the things covering the other thing." The "inter" in "interaction" implies movement between objects in a physical space. To "take advantage" evokes physically grasping something.

Perhaps this is more philosophical than you wanted, but I doubt we'll be leaving behind physical metaphors anytime soon.

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

#98

Post by Mz »

Makes me wonder how old the author is.

Reminds me of an anecdote I read about an elementary school that had a rotary phone for the kids to use well after digital phones were the norm. The kids had to be taught how to use it. One child ultimately concluded it was not too different from a digital phone though it was real slow.

Reminds me of my standard flippant remark to my sons when they were growing up: "When I was a child and had a pet dinosaur and rotary phone." To my young sons, both dinosaurs and rotary phones were "prehistoric" -- I.e. existed before their time. For me, only dinosaurs were actually prehistoric.

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

#99

Post by MengYuanLong »

bgilroy26 wrote: post #53
acheron wrote: post #40

There's a good article to be written on this subject, but this isn't it. "folders": we can go back to "directories" if you'd like. It's still what I say most of the time. "wrenches/screwdrivers/gears": This was the most baffling one. Who's never used a screwdriver? And he says it as if it's obvious. "phone": 75% of the US still has a landline (as of a year ago anyway), so I find "you haven't used this in 20 years" to…

"phone" - The shape he's talking about is this one[1]. While the Wrench/Screwdriver etc. are in common use, the shape here is from the rotary phone, which is not in common use. The page I linked was literally the first google image result for me, and that top cluster of images includes many recognizeable clip-art phones, all with the same rotary phone shape. 1. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/01/getting-the-int…

That isn't necessarily true. He doesn't specify rotary phones.

Even if he did, like the folders and envelopes he also mentions, corded phones which look like the picture are still quite common in office places and thus many peoples lives outside of silicon valley.

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