4 ms·

> You have to teach the user what the icon means. Recognition speed presumably goes up with familiarity. I have Age - 6 years of experience reading, I have fa

• brenschluss 11y ago
  > I have Age - 6 years of experience reading, I have far less than that with whatever icon you come up with. When I mean icons are a language, I literally mean that they're a language, in that there's a lineage and history of these languages. For example, I bet you have decades of experience recognizing the 3.5" diskette 'save' icon, and a similar familiarity with the landline phone receiver as symbolizing 'phone'. These are icons that are part of a shared language, so it's safe to say that using them will be instantly recognizable, despite the fact most people don't use floppy disks or landlines anymore. If a company decides to use a new icon that's not easily recognized, it's like trying to introduce new language; it has to be done smoothly, otherwise most users will not understand what it means. This is not a problem unique to icons; it's a problem across languages. If I had a new command-line tool that, instead of `./cmtool --verbose`, I implemented `./cmtool --consult` or `./cmtool --magicify`, you'd have to `man cmtool` in order to understand what the commands mean. This is because '--verbose' is a flag that's common oft-used enough to be understood, generally, what it means, while 'magicify' or 'consult' are ambiguous and rarely used. This confusion has nothing to do with the nature that the UI is text-based (vs. icon-based), and everything to do with the fact that user interfaces, like a language, involves shared conventions.
• conanbatt 11y ago
  > character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that it should be our go to. This is also a problem. You cant avoid reading text when its presented to you, so extra text makes the page cluttery, and hard to find the text you really want to read. It is very useful to replace an ever same-looking label for an recognizable icon (Like "Close", "Open", "Save" etc).
  • Retra 11y ago
    I don't think you're correct. Yes, you can't avoid reading text, but you spend far less effort reading it than you would trying to decipher icons, which you also can't avoid doing if you want to know how to use the program.
• roywiggins 11y ago
  > If you have multiple products, having your company name start off the title of all your products just means I cannot find your product in my alphabetized app list. Oh great, now I'm flashing back to hunt-and-peck through the Windows XP Start Menu trying to find a particular piece of software in a list categorized sometimes by company, sometimes by software, sometimes by built-in Windows category. An absolute mess.
• yconst 11y ago
  >Our brains have this giant section dedicated to nothing but recognizing characters in our native written language. Sure we have a lot of brain power going to shape recognition in general, but character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that it should be our go to. Yea, but you still have to read them, i.e. focus this "machinery" on a single word/sentence. So you're working in sequence when trying to identify a bunch of unrelated labels. On the contrary, you can probably differentiate an entire group of icons just by a glance in their direction (provided they are appropriately designed, of course). Plus reading speed is pretty much the same no matter how many times you repeat the task. Recognition on the other hand improves with repetition. If you're using only text, you're pretty much stuck with being able to differentiate your icons either by location or by actually reading them. Icons add another component to this. Totally agree with the color-related comment though. IANANS btw, so your mileage may vary.