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"Yet. Yet… the top UX myth of all time is, icons enhance usability" It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. I think the only

"Yet. Yet… the top UX myth of all time is, icons enhance usability" It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. I think the only situation this isn't true is when you are icons aren't clear. You can't use icons for obscure things or things that don't have an established universal recognition for exactly the reason this article describes. That's why everyone always recognizes a picture of an old school telephone versus a smart phone as an icon in front of something like a phone number. I think the "Cardinal" UX mistake made here was that, not using an icon over text.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. That's not at all a fact. It might be faster to recognize images than words (though I think for people that are more than marginally literate, its mostly equivalent for familiar words, because they are recognized as images.) > I think the only situation this isn't true is when you are icons aren't clear. Icons are almost never as clear as words, because they are essentially words written in an ad hoc, application specific, logographic script. The exception is when icons with well-established meanings outside of the specific application are used in a context which makes clear that they are being used in their well-established sense, in which case they become words in familiar logographic script. But except for icons that have well-established action meanings in the context of computer UIs, that's usually not the case in application UIs, even with familiar symbols originating in non-computer-UI domains. There, familiar symbols are used in senses which are inspired by their common usage in other domains, but not identical to them, which still requires both recognizing the symbol and inferring the analogy being used.
- pwg 13y ago
  > > It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. > That's not at all a fact. It might be faster to recognize images than words There is one point that almost all of these icons vs. text discussions omit. And that is an additional phrase at the end of the sentence: "It is faster to recognize images than words, __after you have learned what the image means__".
  - azinman2 13y ago
    Exactly. And that's true until you forget because you're human, and then you have no idea what anything is. The assumption that "faster" is always the primary goal is what happens when CS people try to do UX. Its the dimension that should be optimized last, not first.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. That's not at all a fact. It might be faster to recognize images than words (though I think for people that are more than marginally literate, its mostly equivalent for familiar words, because they are recognized as images.) > I think the only situation this isn't true is when you are icons aren't clear. Icons are almost never as clear as words, because they are essentially words written in an ad hoc, application specific, logographic script. The exception is when icons with well-established meanings outside of the specific application are used in a context which makes clear that they are being used in their well-established sense, in which case they become words in familiar logographic script. But except for icons that have well-established action meanings in the context of computer UIs, that's usually not the case in application UIs, even with familiar symbols originating in non-computer-UI domains. There, familiar symbols are used in senses which are inspired by their common usage in other domains, but not identical to them, which still requires both recognizing the symbol and inferring the analogy being used.

pwg 13y ago
> > It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. > That's not at all a fact. It might be faster to recognize images than words There is one point that almost all of these icons vs. text discussions omit. And that is an additional phrase at the end of the sentence: "It is faster to recognize images than words, __after you have learned what the image means__".
- azinman2 13y ago
  Exactly. And that's true until you forget because you're human, and then you have no idea what anything is. The assumption that "faster" is always the primary goal is what happens when CS people try to do UX. Its the dimension that should be optimized last, not first.