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So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. One o

So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. One of first programs that put pictograms in menus was Microsoft Word. But the way Word did it was entirely different from what we do now. Microsoft Word had toolbars and their buttons, of course, were mostly pictorial. Toolbars could be turned on and off and users could assemble their own toolbars. Microsoft Word's menus displayed pictograms only for the commands that could also be called with currently visible toolbars. Have a toolbar visible? Its pictograms will appear in the menu. Closed that toolbar? The pictograms disappeared. The pictogram did not merely decorate a command, but also provided a hint that the user could call the command with a toolbar. This is informational. This is the right use.

thiht 11mo ago
> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful
- BaudouinVH 11mo ago
  I tend to follow the "no form without function" design philosophy. Your comment makes me rethink that. thanks
- bigstrat2003 11mo ago
  Everything in a UI needs to not hinder usefulness. Adding more information signals (icons) which don't actually convey meaning is clutter that makes the UI harder to parse. That factor is far more important than whether it feels "alive".
  - AndrewOMartin 11mo ago
    Redundancy isn't a dirty word in Information Theory.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 11mo ago
  Classic Mac OS window headers had striped or dot patterns that were kind of similar to rugged parts of various physical tool handles. So they were both decorative in a way and informational: this is a part you can hold and drag around. A typical interface will have a lot of such parts that are both functional and decorative, so it will feel just right. Purely decorative parts are also possible (and even desirable), but they should be personal. A set of colors chosen by the user, a background texture, a picture that the user keeps on the desktop and so on.
  - thiht 11mo ago
    That’s a very subjective view of design, and I strongly disagree with it. I don’t want everything to be too uniform
- antran22 11mo ago
  in that case, they should make it optional. What some might find as eye candy, other finds as nuisance (case in point, animation).
- incrudible 11mo ago
  Menus should not feel alive. Because they are menus, at any given point they mostly contain things the user does not want to interact with right now. Menu icons that serve as visual anchors are good, they help the task of finding the desired action, as well as building a visual memory. Icons everywhere achieve the opposite, for the spurious benefit of visual consistency. Menu items are not consistent affordances, they perform very different actions that are at best related, but oftentimes they are there because they need to be somewhere.
- nottorp 11mo ago
  > Not everything NEEDS to be useful ... until the not-useful becomes distracting and/or causes information overload. In the case of Apple, I've been a user of the Accessibility menu ever since they introduced the stupid parallax wiggling of the icons. Right now i use: reduce motion, bold text and reduce transparency. Because I want to see what I'm looking for when using the phone and not squint through pointless effects.
- strogonoff 11mo ago
  A decorative element can be fine in a design model, but 1) a good design tends to have no purely decorative elements, and 2) it becomes problematic when the decorative element looks like a meaningful element but does not actually carry meaning (or the intended meaning). We all recognise an icon in a menu as a meaningful element. Treating it as a decorative element is wrong and adds mental overhead, as we tend to scan every one of those icons (putting it at the beginning of menu text, i.e., to the left for LTR languages, makes it worse). It is well-known we do tend to scan these icons because that is the reason icons work: repeated exposure creates intuition. If this intuition is not put to use, then all such icons are a waste of our attention. For example, a bullet in a list: fine (differentiates where each list item starts), window shadow or the 3D effect on window close buttons: fine (meaningful in terms if differentiating areas in the GUI, not pretending to do more); whitespace to set apart one thing more from another thing than from the third thing: fine (if that reflects the relationship between those things). This is all somewhat simplified.
- Y_Y 11mo ago
  You remind me of my favourite bit of Windows software ever[0]. It made the desktop feel really alive with things like can-can girls and humanoid fish flying around your "living wallpaper". Then again it was named Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time, so maybe it's not such a good idea for the default environment of a general-purpose operating system. [0] https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-waste-of-time/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-w...
20k 11mo ago
Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform. It lets you skip reading all the text when you're familiar with a dialogue, and you can short circuit what you need to click on without having to read That's the reason why pictographic additions are so useful. Its the reason why we distinguish different kinds of UI elements at all, because colour and graphics are incredibly powerful shortcuts for parsing information
- ACCount37 11mo ago
  This. If I'm out looking for a "Save" button, I'm going to pattern match "ancient disk icon" without even thinking about it. It's also the reason why some menu entries get icons and others don't. If the icon doesn't convey information by itself (like a "move to top" icon example), then it's there as a visual anchor - and you don't really need to have 4 of the same "delete" icon if a menu has 4 different "delete" options next to each other. Just one is enough of an anchor to draw your attention to the "delete group", and having just one keeps the visual noise low. Likewise, you don't need visual anchors for every single option - just the commonly used ones, the ones you expect people to be looking for, and the ones that already have established pictography.
  - sundarurfriend 11mo ago
    > "ancient disk icon" Even though floppy disks were a bit before my time and I rarely ever used them, seeing them be called ancient disk makes me wanna find the nearest coffin and just go lie down. :D
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- icoder 11mo ago
  What may be added is that some people have a hard time reading words by their 'total shape'. I can imagine that for them, the difference between pattern matching symbols and strings of letters is even more profound.
ragazzina 11mo ago
> if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. If the text on the button is always the same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. Just use the position.
- wartywhoa23 11mo ago
  And if the position is always the same, it is decorative, and we'd pretty much rather discard it too and use time, which does not stay the same by definition, and make them stupids click anywhere spatially but on precise time: t % 2 == 0 => action 1, t % 3 == 0 => action 2 etc - but that would be too much of a disrespect towards users, however stupid - and we have no choice but randomize those iconless textless positions dynamically.
scoofy 11mo ago
The pictogram is there for people who can't read English, to help them get by. It's the same reason why Ikea's instruction manuals typically have no words.
Perepiska 11mo ago
JetBrains products had colorful and useful pictograms on menu items and panels. One day they replaced them by B&W versions and it was fail. Few years later they introduced purple icons. For promoting some internal AI companion.

thiht 11mo ago

> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful

BaudouinVH 11mo ago
I tend to follow the "no form without function" design philosophy. Your comment makes me rethink that. thanks
bigstrat2003 11mo ago
Everything in a UI needs to not hinder usefulness. Adding more information signals (icons) which don't actually convey meaning is clutter that makes the UI harder to parse. That factor is far more important than whether it feels "alive".
- AndrewOMartin 11mo ago
  Redundancy isn't a dirty word in Information Theory.
Mikhail_Edoshin 11mo ago
Classic Mac OS window headers had striped or dot patterns that were kind of similar to rugged parts of various physical tool handles. So they were both decorative in a way and informational: this is a part you can hold and drag around. A typical interface will have a lot of such parts that are both functional and decorative, so it will feel just right. Purely decorative parts are also possible (and even desirable), but they should be personal. A set of colors chosen by the user, a background texture, a picture that the user keeps on the desktop and so on.
- thiht 11mo ago
  That’s a very subjective view of design, and I strongly disagree with it. I don’t want everything to be too uniform
antran22 11mo ago
in that case, they should make it optional. What some might find as eye candy, other finds as nuisance (case in point, animation).
incrudible 11mo ago
Menus should not feel alive. Because they are menus, at any given point they mostly contain things the user does not want to interact with right now. Menu icons that serve as visual anchors are good, they help the task of finding the desired action, as well as building a visual memory. Icons everywhere achieve the opposite, for the spurious benefit of visual consistency. Menu items are not consistent affordances, they perform very different actions that are at best related, but oftentimes they are there because they need to be somewhere.
nottorp 11mo ago
> Not everything NEEDS to be useful ... until the not-useful becomes distracting and/or causes information overload. In the case of Apple, I've been a user of the Accessibility menu ever since they introduced the stupid parallax wiggling of the icons. Right now i use: reduce motion, bold text and reduce transparency. Because I want to see what I'm looking for when using the phone and not squint through pointless effects.
strogonoff 11mo ago
A decorative element can be fine in a design model, but 1) a good design tends to have no purely decorative elements, and 2) it becomes problematic when the decorative element looks like a meaningful element but does not actually carry meaning (or the intended meaning). We all recognise an icon in a menu as a meaningful element. Treating it as a decorative element is wrong and adds mental overhead, as we tend to scan every one of those icons (putting it at the beginning of menu text, i.e., to the left for LTR languages, makes it worse). It is well-known we do tend to scan these icons because that is the reason icons work: repeated exposure creates intuition. If this intuition is not put to use, then all such icons are a waste of our attention. For example, a bullet in a list: fine (differentiates where each list item starts), window shadow or the 3D effect on window close buttons: fine (meaningful in terms if differentiating areas in the GUI, not pretending to do more); whitespace to set apart one thing more from another thing than from the third thing: fine (if that reflects the relationship between those things). This is all somewhat simplified.
Y_Y 11mo ago
You remind me of my favourite bit of Windows software ever[0]. It made the desktop feel really alive with things like can-can girls and humanoid fish flying around your "living wallpaper". Then again it was named Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time, so maybe it's not such a good idea for the default environment of a general-purpose operating system. [0] https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-waste-of-time/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-w...

20k 11mo ago

Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform. It lets you skip reading all the text when you're familiar with a dialogue, and you can short circuit what you need to click on without having to read That's the reason why pictographic additions are so useful. Its the reason why we distinguish different kinds of UI elements at all, because colour and graphics are incredibly powerful shortcuts for parsing information

ACCount37 11mo ago
This. If I'm out looking for a "Save" button, I'm going to pattern match "ancient disk icon" without even thinking about it. It's also the reason why some menu entries get icons and others don't. If the icon doesn't convey information by itself (like a "move to top" icon example), then it's there as a visual anchor - and you don't really need to have 4 of the same "delete" icon if a menu has 4 different "delete" options next to each other. Just one is enough of an anchor to draw your attention to the "delete group", and having just one keeps the visual noise low. Likewise, you don't need visual anchors for every single option - just the commonly used ones, the ones you expect people to be looking for, and the ones that already have established pictography.
- sundarurfriend 11mo ago
  > "ancient disk icon" Even though floppy disks were a bit before my time and I rarely ever used them, seeing them be called ancient disk makes me wanna find the nearest coffin and just go lie down. :D
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
icoder 11mo ago
What may be added is that some people have a hard time reading words by their 'total shape'. I can imagine that for them, the difference between pattern matching symbols and strings of letters is even more profound.

ragazzina 11mo ago

> if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. If the text on the button is always the same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. Just use the position.

wartywhoa23 11mo ago
And if the position is always the same, it is decorative, and we'd pretty much rather discard it too and use time, which does not stay the same by definition, and make them stupids click anywhere spatially but on precise time: t % 2 == 0 => action 1, t % 3 == 0 => action 2 etc - but that would be too much of a disrespect towards users, however stupid - and we have no choice but randomize those iconless textless positions dynamically.

scoofy 11mo ago

The pictogram is there for people who can't read English, to help them get by. It's the same reason why Ikea's instruction manuals typically have no words.

Perepiska 11mo ago

JetBrains products had colorful and useful pictograms on menu items and panels. One day they replaced them by B&W versions and it was fail. Few years later they introduced purple icons. For promoting some internal AI companion.