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My car has a bunch of acronyms on the buttons. I’d rather have icons for a lot of them. Should I press the SRH button, maybe the RAB button, how about BSD…

WalterBright 2y ago
My car has a button with a snowflake on it. Does it mean turn on the air conditioning? Turn on the heat? Turn on the defroster? With some experimenting, it turns on the defroster - but only if it is in combination with another button with a bent rectangle on it.
WalterBright 2y ago
The obvious thing to do is have the instruction manual with an index in it and look up SRH quickly using the alpha sort. Even better would be putting the entire manual in the car's computer and using the touch screen to search for SRH. Can't do search with an icon.
- al_borland 2y ago
  Hunting through the owner's manual isn't a good option while driving. Having a single page in the manual with all buttons and their meanings would be helpful, and avoid having to look 20 different places if using the index. Once it's looked up, I think for me, an icon has a better chance of being remembered than trying to remember that SRH stands for Steering Responsive Headlights. SRH could mean just about anything, while a steering wheel and a headlight on a button would give me a pretty strong reminder that it's for making the lights move with the steering wheel, even if I don't remember the technical or marketing name for the feature.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Most of the icons in my car have no correlation with their function. Every designer of these thinks he's Susan Kare. For example, what's the icon for "stop"? There isn't one. We've all simply memorized what a red octagon means. There aren't any icons for verbs, only things, and with the very limited space for a drawing, they aren't going to reliably be interpretable. My keyboard still labels keys with "Enter", "Delete", "PgDn", "Shift", etc. That's because there's no icon that means it.
    - al_borland 2y ago
      > We've all simply memorized what a red octagon means. This is required learning to get a driver's license. If anyone doesn't know what a red octagon is, they shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car. That same is true for any common symbol used in street signs. Music playback has pretty universal iconography. ▶ ⏏. I'm sure anyone who used a walkman or discman in their youth could readily tell you what all these icons mean. It doesn't seem unreasonable that standards could/should be made for cars as well. As the names for things get longer and longer, the words are too long for the button, so we need something else. > My keyboard still labels keys with "Enter", "Delete", "PgDn", "Shift", etc. That's because there's no icon that means it. Many of these do have symbols. Some keyboards include them. The symbols are commonly used in menus to indicate the shortcut for the command in the menu. "Enter" - ⏎ "Delete" - ⌦ "PgDn" - ⇟ "Shift" - ⇧ etc - https://www.webnots.com/alt-code-shortcuts-for-keyboard-key-symbols/ https://www.webnots.com/alt-code-shortcuts-for-keyboard-key-... These were established decades ago and widely used to this day. Page Down isn't so widely used, but neither is that key in general. Here is a Thinkpad keyboard that uses many of them. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/SuQsONNAdfeYp1ZV.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/SuQsONNAdfeYp1ZV.lar...
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        Those are all learned, they are not obvious pictures. There's a limit to how far one can go with this, which is why pictographic written languages evolved into phonetic ones, again and again.
        al_borland 2y ago
        Everything is learned, even language. Phonetic languages are great when space is unlimited. Only so much can fit on a button, and a picture is worth a thousand words.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        If pictures are better, why do picture languages nearly always evolve to phonetic ones? What's the picture for "go" ? What's the picture for "dog" as opposed to a picture for collie? There are one million words in the English language. Are you going to memorize them all? Picture languages simply do not work.

WalterBright 2y ago

My car has a button with a snowflake on it. Does it mean turn on the air conditioning? Turn on the heat? Turn on the defroster? With some experimenting, it turns on the defroster - but only if it is in combination with another button with a bent rectangle on it.

WalterBright 2y ago

The obvious thing to do is have the instruction manual with an index in it and look up SRH quickly using the alpha sort. Even better would be putting the entire manual in the car's computer and using the touch screen to search for SRH. Can't do search with an icon.

al_borland 2y ago
Hunting through the owner's manual isn't a good option while driving. Having a single page in the manual with all buttons and their meanings would be helpful, and avoid having to look 20 different places if using the index. Once it's looked up, I think for me, an icon has a better chance of being remembered than trying to remember that SRH stands for Steering Responsive Headlights. SRH could mean just about anything, while a steering wheel and a headlight on a button would give me a pretty strong reminder that it's for making the lights move with the steering wheel, even if I don't remember the technical or marketing name for the feature.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Most of the icons in my car have no correlation with their function. Every designer of these thinks he's Susan Kare. For example, what's the icon for "stop"? There isn't one. We've all simply memorized what a red octagon means. There aren't any icons for verbs, only things, and with the very limited space for a drawing, they aren't going to reliably be interpretable. My keyboard still labels keys with "Enter", "Delete", "PgDn", "Shift", etc. That's because there's no icon that means it.
  - al_borland 2y ago
    > We've all simply memorized what a red octagon means. This is required learning to get a driver's license. If anyone doesn't know what a red octagon is, they shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car. That same is true for any common symbol used in street signs. Music playback has pretty universal iconography. ▶ ⏏. I'm sure anyone who used a walkman or discman in their youth could readily tell you what all these icons mean. It doesn't seem unreasonable that standards could/should be made for cars as well. As the names for things get longer and longer, the words are too long for the button, so we need something else. > My keyboard still labels keys with "Enter", "Delete", "PgDn", "Shift", etc. That's because there's no icon that means it. Many of these do have symbols. Some keyboards include them. The symbols are commonly used in menus to indicate the shortcut for the command in the menu. "Enter" - ⏎ "Delete" - ⌦ "PgDn" - ⇟ "Shift" - ⇧ etc - https://www.webnots.com/alt-code-shortcuts-for-keyboard-key-symbols/ https://www.webnots.com/alt-code-shortcuts-for-keyboard-key-... These were established decades ago and widely used to this day. Page Down isn't so widely used, but neither is that key in general. Here is a Thinkpad keyboard that uses many of them. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/SuQsONNAdfeYp1ZV.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/SuQsONNAdfeYp1ZV.lar...
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Those are all learned, they are not obvious pictures. There's a limit to how far one can go with this, which is why pictographic written languages evolved into phonetic ones, again and again.
      - al_borland 2y ago
        Everything is learned, even language. Phonetic languages are great when space is unlimited. Only so much can fit on a button, and a picture is worth a thousand words.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        If pictures are better, why do picture languages nearly always evolve to phonetic ones? What's the picture for "go" ? What's the picture for "dog" as opposed to a picture for collie? There are one million words in the English language. Are you going to memorize them all? Picture languages simply do not work.