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I've started strongly leaning towards the principle that if I have to choose between either an icon or text on a button, I will choose text. Icons are nice land
by DagAgren 7y ago
I've started strongly leaning towards the principle that if I have to choose between either an icon or text on a button, I will choose text. Icons are nice landmarks to guide the eye, but they are absolutely worthless to convey information or to find functions that you do not already have muscle memory for. Text is clearer, and the varying word shapes and lengths gives the eye a lot to work with already for locating things.
Try sitting someone who has never seen your UI before down in front of it, and try to explain to them how to do something without pointing at the screen, and see how much they struggle if your buttons only have icons.
- jjoonathan 7y agoYes! This was exactly the consensus in desktop app UX circles before mobile UX popularized "hamburger menu and heiroglyph" design, which intentionally sacrifices legibility to obtain screen space. It's unfortunate that many designers these days often jump for hamburgers and heiroglyphs in circumstances where that sacrifice doesn't make sense.
- jkoberg 7y agoTurns out "designers" are not very creative or thoughtful, and mostly copy "trends"
- pcurve 7y agoGmail had disastrous ui change many years ago where they replaced most text buttons with icons. They had to backpedal quickly. With that said, there's some benefit to icon. If there's third choice of using icon and text together (for certain actions), I'd use the combo.