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I think you're either unaware or ignoring that, in both of those cases, there was precedent that people were already familiar with when those icons came out. Pa

I think you're either unaware or ignoring that, in both of those cases, there was precedent that people were already familiar with when those icons came out. Pause, play, and stop, for example, were found on nearly any media/cassette/tape player and served as simple indicators of the direction the tape/spool was going. The arrow to left meant the reel was spinning backwards because the tape moved to the left, the square meant stop because the reel didn't move at all, and the play icon meant that the reel was moving to the right. Add in double arrows to denote speed. Add a line at the far left/far right to indicate beginning/end. The hamburger has no such lineage. It started as a menu icon and changed slightly but no one had any idea what even the initial icon meant without an explanation that it's a list.

underwater 5y ago
The hamburger menu represents a list of items. It's symbolic, but at least a direct representation of the outcome the user wants. The play and stop icons were icons that describe an operation of a machine that will then indirectly produce the outcome the user wants. They require the user to know how the machine functions. No one thinks "I would like the tape to move to the right" or "I would like the music to stop, which means the tape needs to stop moving, which means stopping the spools, which means selecting the least circular shape".
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  >They require the user to know how the machine functions. No, they don't. That's why they worked so well and was my entire point. All people needed to know was that they wanted to go forward, backward, or stop movement in whatever music or video was playing and that's a clear metaphorical and symbolical link. Someone with no knowledge of the function could walk up to a tape recorder and infer what the symbols meant in relation to what was happening. The hamburger menu is not even intuitively a list and there's no connection that a user presented with it would recognize it as a call for a menu/list. There are plenty of user studies that confirm this.

underwater 5y ago

The hamburger menu represents a list of items. It's symbolic, but at least a direct representation of the outcome the user wants. The play and stop icons were icons that describe an operation of a machine that will then indirectly produce the outcome the user wants. They require the user to know how the machine functions. No one thinks "I would like the tape to move to the right" or "I would like the music to stop, which means the tape needs to stop moving, which means stopping the spools, which means selecting the least circular shape".

dkonofalski 5y ago
>They require the user to know how the machine functions. No, they don't. That's why they worked so well and was my entire point. All people needed to know was that they wanted to go forward, backward, or stop movement in whatever music or video was playing and that's a clear metaphorical and symbolical link. Someone with no knowledge of the function could walk up to a tape recorder and infer what the symbols meant in relation to what was happening. The hamburger menu is not even intuitively a list and there's no connection that a user presented with it would recognize it as a call for a menu/list. There are plenty of user studies that confirm this.