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Using words often works. But let me chime in with some outrage about the icons on an Android tablet - a triangle, circle and square with no discoverability and
by mhb 3y ago
Using words often works. But let me chime in with some outrage about the icons on an Android tablet - a triangle, circle and square with no discoverability and no ability to add text to icons on the home screen? WTF?
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoCan you clarify what you mean for discoverability? As for the 2nd one, I would download a different launcher. I know Nova lets you do that.
- mhb 3y agoI mean that it's impossible to discover what will happen when I push on them before I do it. I'll take a look at Nova. Thanks.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoAh yeah I know what you mean. For what it is worth, they've been pushing a new gestures system that supercedes the old tool belt buttons. Not sure your tablet has that. And you probably know now, but just in case Triangle: back Circle: close Square: task manager
- lupire 3y agoIt takes 1 day to learn, to avoid years of extra clutter on the screen. But an option or a long press tooltip would be nice for special cases.
- CamperBob2 3y agoLegibility isn't clutter. We moved away from hieroglyphics a long time ago because alphanumeric characters are objectively better.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoHieroglyphics are alphanumeric characters. We moved away from them because they are much too detailed to be convenient to write. You could make a case that alphabetic characters are "objectively better" than syllabic characters, but you'd have to do it on some other basis than "we moved away from them a long time ago"; syllabaries are very common today and don't cause problems.
- CamperBob2 3y agoOK, as I'm not an Egyptologist, let's substitute any other language whose orthography is based on icons and pictograms. There aren't many, and there's a reason for that. They suck. Certain Asian languages come to mind, something they started to regret grievously around the time the typewriter was invented.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoOK, here's an example of some written language with a heavy reliance on logograms: > omg how r u doing that > lmfao > c u 2nite (2nite is especially interesting because the icon is used to represent just part of the word!) This is mostly notable because the formal written system didn't allow it, and the logographic forms were introduced spontaneously as a result of large numbers of people being literate. In other words, they are an example of the direction of change pointing toward logograms, not away from them. > Certain Asian languages come to mind Japanese is the only one that might fit this description.
- teddyh 3y agoSometimes called “Mystery meat navigation”.
- marcosdumay 3y agoNewer Android uses a hamburger, a square, and an arrow. It's not obvious what they are, but the shapes are very mnemonic.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoWords are terrible and provincial. Symbols are universal and clear when used correctly and precisely.
- Izkata 3y agoIf you're using Samsung, they have an app called Good Lock that lets you change the icons to pretty much whatever you want. Mine are the same as the original Android icons: a curved back arrow, a little house, and two overlapped rectangles. Definitely agree the defaults are bad though.