I’m only 24, but didn’t get a smartphone until pretty recently. The thing that bothers me the most about mobile UIs is how implicit everything is—there are very few affordances to indicate what’s even interactible.
For example, I would never have tried to swipe down from the top of the screen on Android to view my notifications unless I had seen it done before, or I had done it by accident. To me, that’s abysmal design.
I tend to see people in the West (of which I am a native) who completely discount their cultural preconceptions when approaching accessible digital design.
It might be less culturally specific than you think. You wouldn't believe how often Chinese people send me 。。。 in chat.
Universal glyphs versus culturally specific symbols, and glyphs should win every time imo.
There are no universal glyphs; they're all culturally specific.
Why show me something meaningless because native Chinese speakers don't grok it? Show me (US male) what I get and show them what they get.
But, really, I don't care that much about what character we use as a menu button; I just wish we'd settle on one, for consistency's sake. And, when we do show a menu button, it shouldn't become a "kitchen sink" kind of menu (looking at you, Chrome)-- a menu button (without specific text or a more specific icon) should house global navigation and functionality, with more specific functionality placed in contextually appropriate locations within your app, where the user will actually find them.
Every iconic web element is modeled after the standard for operating systems. Think close buttons, minimize, input fields. While ellipses is better, it's not good enough because it's a terrible practice to put actions out of sight. There is no icon that semantically represents "a group of various actions that are related" because for that we need words.