3 ms·
If you want to say something and be understood, use words in a commonly-used language: English. Using icons is, effectively inventing new words. Nobody has se
by alejohausner 8y ago
If you want to say something and be understood, use words in a commonly-used language: English. Using icons is, effectively inventing new words. Nobody has seen those words before: they are the designer's private language.
- gowld 8y agoThat's a provincial point of view. Despite Anglo hegemony, billions of people prefer non-English. Anyway, English invents new words or new meanings all the time. What does a "cloud" have to do with webservers?
- cabaalis 8y ago> What does a "cloud" have to do with webservers? I've always assumed it had to do with the common use of a cloud to refer to the internet or other network on diagrams. With a cloud being used because it conveyed a sense of "the unknown" or "uncontrollable." Which is an interesting meaning progression to the current version of "cloud."
- gowld 8y ago> common use of a cloud to refer to the internet or other network on diagrams. You know that because you are a network software developer. In summary, though, "Cloud icon represents the cloud, and we use the word "cloud" because ... we use a cloud icon to represent it."
- alejohausner 8y agoSorry about that. I didn't mean that English is best. I meant that existing languages can say things better than icons invented by programmers, who are people with skills that have been honed on communicating with computers, not communicating with other humans.