Taskbar is a bad example here. As I mentioned below, icons without text are good choice if and only if the user sees them all the time / knows exactly what they

Taskbar is a bad example here. As I mentioned below, icons without text are good choice if and only if the user sees them all the time / knows exactly what they mean. The stuff most (98%) of people sees in their Windows 7 taskbar is really familiar to them -- IE or Firefox symbol, Word, Excel, Skype, etc. It's OK to use icons there, it saves a lot of space, and people don't really 'parse' the icons at all, they just remember the spatial locations, and maybe the colors. But having very similar, black and white icons without text in a smartphone app? Really bad decision. BTW, colors help a lot, even they sometimes conflict with the currently fashionable flat designs. Look at the new Visual Studio -- it looks nice, but developers keep complaining about the lack of colours.