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Icons and text are exactly the same thing. They're both language; visual forms that mean something. We're more used to text, because text has a lot of nice pr

Icons and text are exactly the same thing. They're both language; visual forms that mean something. We're more used to text, because text has a lot of nice properties as a medium for language so it has become pervasive. It's generally low dimensional and has high composability. For low bandwidth mediums it's ideal, because it's also low bandwidth. But that doesn't mean icons aren't a language and aren't just as useful as text. They just have different strengths and weaknesses. Icons are higher bandwidth and higher dimensional (a tiny 32x32 grayscale image has 1024 dimensions!). But they're also very dense. What could take a large amount of physical space to describe with text, might only take a small 32x32 space with an icon. All that to say, I don't disagree with your assessment of the situation. But I don't think it should be viewed as icons vs text, as if they're two completely different things. It should be viewed as a general problem of effective communication. Text can be just as bad. Imagine reading "subtract b from a and divide that result by q" versus "(a - b) / q". The latter is a more efficient language which most everyone will understand. Better to use the latter. What if instead of writing "save" and "load" the designers wrote "serialize game state" and "deserialize game state". It means the same thing, but clearly "save" and "load" are better. Why? More people will understand them, and the extra information communicated by the verbose alternative isn't necessary. Just as in a lot of situations an icon, if generally understood by the UI's target audience, can be a better alternative than writing "save" and "load".

everyone 9y ago
Interesting comment, I totally agree. Eg. For a casual user, very clear highly descriptive medium is best (eg tooltips), for a mid-level user familiar with the program, icons are ideal. For a super-user, they dont need any visual UI and can do everything from memory using keyboard commands or gestures. I think icons are mis-used more frequently by modern designers than text. Perhaps it is a lot easier to mis-use icons beceause their meanings are not standardised or codified. With English text for example, there are dictionaries and official sources for grammar, spelling and meaning. Also people are actively taught these officially accepted values in school. The suite of icons we're discussing (eg. disk icon for 'save' right facing arrow for 'play') have come from a mish mash of different contributors, only in the past few decades and in the tech industry where things have been in constant flux. The same icon can often mean two completely different things, and they can also often be stylized into an unrecognizable or ambiguous form.
- everyone 9y ago
  Is there a dictionary for icons? If not, maybe its time someone started one!
Turing_Machine 9y ago
"Icons and text are exactly the same thing." Nope. Icons are direct visual analogs of the things represented. There's just one layer of abstraction: thing -> picture of thing. An icon, at least in principle, looks like the thing represented (or at least like some important property of it). That's feasible for "save" or "center the text", but starts to get pretty damned hard when it's something like "Earl Warren's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education". Western text, by contrast, is a visual representation of the phonemes in the verbal representation of the thing. Thing -> audio of word representing thing -> phonemes making up that word -> text. There are at least two more layers of abstraction involved, with all the additional power that implies. The word "horse" has virtually nothing in common with a physical horse. Another important difference: a literate person can immediately write down any word that can be spoken, and any other literate person (who has learned that same character set) can immediately reproduce the original spoken word. (I'm assuming, arguendo, that we're using the IPA alphabet or some other character set that tries to cover all the world's phonemes in an unambiguous manner). Icons, by contrast, have to be designed. Good ones take a lot of thought and artistic skill to create, and even then they are notoriously prone to misinterpretation or outright user bafflement. 'Text can be just as bad. Imagine reading "subtract b from a and divide that result by q" versus "(a - b) / q". The latter is a more efficient language which most everyone will understand. Better to use the latter.' The latter is still text. It's just using a different written language. It is a compact representation of "subtract the second thing from the first thing and divide the result by the third thing". How on earth could you represent that using icons? It seems like it would be quite a challenge.
- fpgaminer 9y ago
  > Icons are direct visual analogs of the things represented. Counter example: The universal icon for "play", as in to play a movie, is a right facing arrow. It is not a visual analog of anything, since playing a movie is an entirely abstract concept. The same is true of rewind, pause, and most other controls on a VCR. Having two icons next to each other, one that looks like a "+" and the other that looks like a "-" indicates a set of controls for increasing and decreasing. Again, these are icons that are not visual analogs of anything; they're entirely abstract. The fact that a lot of icons are visual analogs is merely for convenience sake. Having a button that looks like an open door helps communicate to people, who've never been taught what that icon means, that this is probably a button that opens a door. That's more convenient than having to educate all users that a completely arbitrary symbol means "open a door". But, as I mentioned with the VCR control examples, if the thing you're trying to represent doesn't have a visual analog at all, then you just have to design something arbitrary and explain it to people until it becomes common language. Much like a heart symbol.

everyone 9y ago

Interesting comment, I totally agree. Eg. For a casual user, very clear highly descriptive medium is best (eg tooltips), for a mid-level user familiar with the program, icons are ideal. For a super-user, they dont need any visual UI and can do everything from memory using keyboard commands or gestures. I think icons are mis-used more frequently by modern designers than text. Perhaps it is a lot easier to mis-use icons beceause their meanings are not standardised or codified. With English text for example, there are dictionaries and official sources for grammar, spelling and meaning. Also people are actively taught these officially accepted values in school. The suite of icons we're discussing (eg. disk icon for 'save' right facing arrow for 'play') have come from a mish mash of different contributors, only in the past few decades and in the tech industry where things have been in constant flux. The same icon can often mean two completely different things, and they can also often be stylized into an unrecognizable or ambiguous form.

everyone 9y ago
Is there a dictionary for icons? If not, maybe its time someone started one!

Turing_Machine 9y ago

"Icons and text are exactly the same thing." Nope. Icons are direct visual analogs of the things represented. There's just one layer of abstraction: thing -> picture of thing. An icon, at least in principle, looks like the thing represented (or at least like some important property of it). That's feasible for "save" or "center the text", but starts to get pretty damned hard when it's something like "Earl Warren's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education". Western text, by contrast, is a visual representation of the phonemes in the verbal representation of the thing. Thing -> audio of word representing thing -> phonemes making up that word -> text. There are at least two more layers of abstraction involved, with all the additional power that implies. The word "horse" has virtually nothing in common with a physical horse. Another important difference: a literate person can immediately write down any word that can be spoken, and any other literate person (who has learned that same character set) can immediately reproduce the original spoken word. (I'm assuming, arguendo, that we're using the IPA alphabet or some other character set that tries to cover all the world's phonemes in an unambiguous manner). Icons, by contrast, have to be designed. Good ones take a lot of thought and artistic skill to create, and even then they are notoriously prone to misinterpretation or outright user bafflement. 'Text can be just as bad. Imagine reading "subtract b from a and divide that result by q" versus "(a - b) / q". The latter is a more efficient language which most everyone will understand. Better to use the latter.' The latter is still text. It's just using a different written language. It is a compact representation of "subtract the second thing from the first thing and divide the result by the third thing". How on earth could you represent that using icons? It seems like it would be quite a challenge.

fpgaminer 9y ago
> Icons are direct visual analogs of the things represented. Counter example: The universal icon for "play", as in to play a movie, is a right facing arrow. It is not a visual analog of anything, since playing a movie is an entirely abstract concept. The same is true of rewind, pause, and most other controls on a VCR. Having two icons next to each other, one that looks like a "+" and the other that looks like a "-" indicates a set of controls for increasing and decreasing. Again, these are icons that are not visual analogs of anything; they're entirely abstract. The fact that a lot of icons are visual analogs is merely for convenience sake. Having a button that looks like an open door helps communicate to people, who've never been taught what that icon means, that this is probably a button that opens a door. That's more convenient than having to educate all users that a completely arbitrary symbol means "open a door". But, as I mentioned with the VCR control examples, if the thing you're trying to represent doesn't have a visual analog at all, then you just have to design something arbitrary and explain it to people until it becomes common language. Much like a heart symbol.