Usability in Icons
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Usability in Icons
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Usability in Icons
#2It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
Re: Usability in Icons
#3They seem to suggest the 'winning' icon for their purposes was simply 'www'. (Perhaps, it was also blue and underlined, which are strong cues to average users of linkishness.) But, there's no example image!
Re: Usability in Icons
#4It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
Its an inverted floppy disk by the way :) So its not even correct
Re: Usability in Icons
#5No wonder kayak recently replaced icons for "details", "pin", etc., with simple text.
A/B test could also provide statistics of how well text v/s icon performs for non-trivial items.
Re: Usability in Icons
#6It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
What would be a good replacement? A little cloud perhaps? :-) Or somebody engraving something on a stone tablet (timeless)?
Re: Usability in Icons
#7It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
as long as the convention is universally understood, it serves the required purpose.
also, imagine the amazement on your kid's (or grand kid's) face when you explain to them the "origin" of the save icon and how it represents a floppy disk which could contain a full 1.44 Mb of data.
Re: Usability in Icons
#8A great example of the wrong way to report user research.
- How many participants were tested? - Who was tested? - What kind of test was it? Survey? Lab study? etc? - Between subjects or within (i.e. did the same people see all the icons)?
I could go on.
Re: Usability in Icons
#9It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...
What would be a good replacement? A little cloud perhaps? :-) Or somebody engraving something on a stone tablet (timeless)?
I use an arrow pointing down to a 2D HD icon. Perhaps not the best imagery, but I guess I feel like I can afford to buck tradition.
Re: Usability in Icons
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be a good replacement? A little cloud perhaps? :-) Or somebody engraving something on a stone tablet (timeless)?
I use an arrow pointing down to a 2D HD icon. Perhaps not the best imagery, but I guess I feel like I can afford to buck tradition.
In a way, that's only postponing the same result as the floppy disk icon.