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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

>I'd argue that an important element of UI is discoverability

The whole point of icons is that you don't need to "discover" what they do. They're supposed to be intuitive.

To me an arrow pointing down means "download," not "select all."

If you can't convey your meaning inside a 16x16px monochrome block, then perhaps that's not the best choice for the task at hand.

Time to innovate.

Also, Google's choice to deviate from every other mobile menu icon on the planet (the hamburger menu) is a sign of hubris, not an effort to help the customer.

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No icon anywhere is intuitive. They're all learned.

Once you've hovered over the icon and learned its meaning then you can recognize it by the picture.

You can't hover over icons on mobile.

I still remember once upon a time ome could long press icons/buttons and the hover text would appear. But oh well, it seems we are too far ahead in the future now.

Scissors for cut.

Underline anywhere.

Paragraph justification.

Copyboard for paste.

Fill bucket for fill.

These are intuitive for most people for whom they were targeted.

Three bars for a menu is not intuitive.

Cut is a really terrible example though, because the entire naming of the 'cut' operation isn't intuitive. "Cut" is really "relocate-object-action-first-half" and "paste" is really "relocate-object-action-second-half". We don't have good words for that. The entire relocation object involves program state and that adds some extra complexity.

Cut has a whole heap of connotations that don't relate to the editing "cut" operation. Google suggests incision, wound, to separate into parts, "remove (something) from something larger by using a sharp implement". Editing cut doesn't do any of this.

There is a very specific link in that relocating text /could be/ thought of as snipping it off a page and pasting it somewhere else, except no-one would ever do that when writing seriously. They erase and rewrite.

So the scissors icon links to the word cut, but cut itself is actually a mystery-meat operation where figuring it out is hard for users that aren't already savvy with interfaces. By extension, the scissors icon has no link to the actual operation that the button performs.

Cut and Paste is really the same as cutting out a shape in construction paper and pasting it elsewhere. Its gone from its original location and can be put in a new one. The only place the metaphor fails is that you can paste multiple times.

In image programs there is literally a white gap where to object was. Word processors would redo line breaks and hide the original location.

I would argue they most of those are only intuitive from long use, and were no more obvious than three bars when introduced (though they were easy to learn and quicker to recognize than text, just like the menu convention.)

In a few years, three bars will be just as intuitive to most users, and probably be the intuitive icon we use as a reference when complaining that the icon to switch on ranged machine-brain interaction instead of touch interface isn't as intuitive as established iconography.

Those are all icons that seem intuitive because they're consistently used for that for about as long as you're alive. They're all metaphors for what office workers in 60s-80s did. If you worked in a corporate office then, you might have had a shot at guessing the meaning correctly. Otherwise, they're just as arbitrary as hamburger menus.

> Copyboard for paste.

I don't even know what on Earth is a "copyboard". Is this some arcane tool from early XX-century newspaper office?

They're intuitive for me, now. I remember when I got my first Windows computer, and those icons baffled me.

The first Windows I used, 3.11, had a built-in tutorial explaining all the weird stuff, including helping you become comfortable with using your mouse.

I miss the days when software people cared about built-in user guides.

> No icon anywhere is intuitive. They're all learned.

Absolutely not true.

The word "icon" originated with religious artwork and was used to tell stories to the people at a time when 99% of the population was illiterate.

Governments spend millions of dollars on research to design important icons that will be completely intuitive for hundreds or thousands of years. Things like the radioactive trefoil, or the biohazard sign. (Google it, there's lots of articles about this.)

Nobody wants to tell some future human, "Oh, sorry you sank into a 4,000-year-old pool of radioactive sludge and died. You should have "learned" it was dangerous ahead of time. At least you "discovered" what it means, now that you're dead."

The icons are used as elements to tell stories, because people already learned what the icons mean. No one intuitively knows that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.

> millions of dollars on research to design important icons that will be completely intuitive for hundreds or thousands of years.

And the results of that research is that conclusion that such icons are impossible to create. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/

> Nobody wants to tell some future human, "Oh, sorry you sank into a 4,000-year-old pool of radioactive sludge and died. You should have "learned" it was dangerous ahead of time. At least you "discovered" what it means, now that you're dead."

Of course not. They tell some future human: "I'm glad you stayed out of that pool. It's great that you learned what the skull+crossbones icon meant during your childhoold."

Eh, I’d say most Christian icons are not at all understandable without learning. After all, they’re mostly just portraits of people (Jesus, Mary, saints, etc.) looking at the camera, rather than depicting any particular event in their lives, let alone trying to provide a broader explanation of why they’re important or worth venerating. Apparently there was an elaborate system of symbolism, especially in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, with everything from specific colors of clothing to hand gestures having various meanings – but you have to already know those meanings in order to understand the symbols.

You might want to google that yourself.

Here's Charles Baldwin [involved in developing the biohazard symbol] telling you the goals of the project:

> We wanted something that was memorable but meaningless, so we could educate people as to what it means.

And all the research into the latter problem? There'd be a whole lot less of it if the biohazard icon were intuitive.

Instead, in the context of the US Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, we have ideas like a scary looking 'Landscape of thorns' being shut down because interesting looking places could become tourist attractions, the idea of starting a religious tradition around the area being seriously considered, and the conclusion that, ultimately, there's no good solution.

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