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> it seems quite natural that a time-related action would be setting a reminder. I think this highlights that everyone potentially has a different understandin
by gnode 8y ago
> it seems quite natural that a time-related action would be setting a reminder.
I think this highlights that everyone potentially has a different understanding. That wasn't obvious to me, or the article's author. Personally I would expect a reminder button to have a bell icon.
- kbenson 8y ago> Personally I would expect a reminder button to have a bell icon. Likely because you've associated a bell with "alarm", and you're associated "alarm" with "reminder", but that's likely a learned association because of these systems because alarm really means danger. An "alarm clock" is probably the origination of that association, but I think the terminology could have just as easily gone with "notification clock" or "wake-up clock" originally, and we woulnd't be using "alarm" as we do much of the time now. I think what this actually points to is that while some icons have become normalized over time, (settings is usually indicated by bars, or the "hamburger" icon, power has a well accepted icon now), there exist people that still don't know them well because they either haven't used modern devices enough, or used older devices without a standard enough that it takes longer to recognize the convergence. I imagine any proposed icon standard probably has about a decade before it's widely understood by most people, because of the lag in usage in popular applications, which lags exposure to people, and the large number of people that use technology where it would be present sparingly enough that it takes a long time to become obvious and accepted. In the end though, I think that's what's needed, as skeuomorphic and conceptual based icons have problems as noted here.
- kgwgk 8y ago> the terminology could have just as easily gone with "notification clock" or "wake-up clock" originally In that case we would still use bell icons. Because the bell would be still associated with the "notification clock" or the "wake-up clock".
- kbenson 8y agoBut it still falls into skeuomorphism. How many people are familiar with the traditional alarm clock with a bell? My daughter is, but only because I took her phone away as a punishment, and the cheap alarm clock she picked out to wake up in the morning happened to be the traditional design.
- kgwgk 8y agoSure, but it doesn’t have anything to do with bell-equipped clocks being called “alarm clocks”, “notification clocks” or “wake-up clocks”. Edit: The association is ringing bell <=> notification/wakeup, not about alarms/danger. I think a siren light icon would be used for that. Which is also an interesting case study on shift of meaning as sirens were originally about sound (and songs) and not a warning signal but a danger themselves.
- kbenson 8y agoWe're getting into territory that is far enough in the past that I'm unsure of the origination or prior common uses. That is sort of the point though, many of these icons are linked to things conceptually and visually which themselves came about from visual or conceptual links, but are at this point mostly obsoleted. That, along with the spread of those concepts into neighboring concepts, leads to a lot of baggage and ambiguity when using images that link to these concepts visually. I think, given the choice of using an icon of an alarm clock or bell or even just a round faced clock[1], or creating some new image that we can try to standardize on, we'll be better off eventually if we choose the latter. 1: This one might be particularly troublesome in the future. Rounds faced clocks aren't exactly rare, but they are getting less common every year. In the future using it might be akin to using a representation of an abacus to represent a calculator. If people think that's ridiculous, consider that my parents used an abacus in high school, so it's not that far removed...
- gowld 8y agoWhat doe a "bell" look like? I can't remember the last time I saw a bell.