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It's been 10 years and my parents are still clueless "What is that? Why don't they put 'menu' there?" I don't know dad, I'm not the one who made it
by nancyminusone 1y ago
It's been 10 years and my parents are still clueless
"What is that? Why don't they put 'menu' there?"
I don't know dad, I'm not the one who made it
- SoftTalker 1y agoText labels add SO much in terms of usability. I don't know why we got away from them. I guess they don't look as pretty.
- card_zero 1y agoNot an option, because it makes it harder work to sell a product to the Chinese.
- kevindamm 1y agothe RTL languages are also a pain point, and even German can make your UI designing difficult for length of words. Really, the high variability of width for i18n'ed words in general is I think where the icon-heavy approach originated.
- robocat 1y agoI was using a cheap device the other day and it had: [◂] [xxx] [▸] Left button was UP and right button was DOWN (numbers e.g. temperature). Is there any reason that ◂ would be UP in Chinese?
- grues-dinner 1y agoSort of. 上 means both up and previous, 下 means down and next. Maybe there was miscommunication about contexts when the button meant next and when it meant down in the UI.
- userbinator 1y agoThe question of whether that's a good thing is a different matter, however.
- ericmcer 1y agoThe brain is better with images once it has been trained to recognize them. Just sucks for the people that never got the training.
- mcswell 1y agoNo it isn't. That's why hieroglyphics became indecipherable for nearly 2000 years, while all the various alphabetic systems invented during that time--and many of those invented long before--remained readable.
- skrtskrt 1y agoThe problem is not only do all text labels have different sizes in one language, they also have completely different unrelated sizes in other languages. Standardized icons can be laid out easily regardless of language
- userbinator 1y agoI've heard that argument... used multiple times, for an application which would basically never be in any other language but English.
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y agoCan you please let them know to change it? Someone should tell them
- foresto 1y agoI hope your parents never have to deal with European appliances, the controls of which are often labeled with mysterious icons instead of words.
- stanac 1y agoEasy i18n? They don't have to translate the UI to 30+ languages.
- foresto 1y agoYes, that's the obvious reason for it, but having a reason doesn't make the icons any more comprehensible. Good luck using those appliances if you're a visitor who doesn't have the manuals and hasn't learned each manufacturer's unique iconography.
- BenjiWiebe 1y agoInstead of having words that are only understood by speakers of one language, they choose icons that aren't understood by any.
- mcswell 1y agoFor better or for worse, English is a lingua franca in the EU. (Sorry, France.)
- ttepasse 1y agoThat's depends very much on age, class, geographic location. Someone could have grown up imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, hence learning Russian as a second language. Nonetheless they deserve appliances, websites and infrastructure which they can use and understand.