Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant, and nobody cleaned the milk siphon so it went moldy and was thrown out after two weeks.
I insisted that we keep the old Bunn that had an advanced UI with a red illuminated On-Off switch. Six months later, it was the only one coffee maker still in use.
Still can't figure out how to turn on the defroster in a new car. My old truck was simple - turn the knob to "DEFROST". My cat feeder invented all its own icons, trying to get it set up is a nightmare. I keep the instruction manual next to it.
I hate Steve Jobs for convincing the world that written words are bad and random cute pictures are cool. Please, bring back "DELETE".
When Jobs had to choose a washing machine for his family, he chose a Miele with plenty of words on it:
https://9to5mac.com/2011/03/07/how-steve-jobs-picks-a-washer...
Famously, using a trash can instead of "DELETE".
A Mac evangelist came to my workplace shortly after the Mac was released. His entire presentation was about how icons were far better than words. He asserted the function of the icons was obvious, and so needed no explanation. He passed around a sheet of paper with a bunch of icons on it, and said isn't that right?
This all fell apart when nobody could figure out what the box of Kleenex icon was. He was visibly flustered by this, eventually exclaiming that it meant "PRINT".
This was all made worse by the practice of copyrighting icons so every company invented their same-only-different icons.
But, the Mac won anyway and PRINT and DEFROST became hopelessly uncool, unhip and old-fashioned.
I predict that, like all hieroglyphic writing systems, icons will eventually evolve to have associated sounds with them, then they'll morph into simple pen strokes, then we'll be back to a new phonetic alphabet.
Is it really that hard to figure out what STOP on the international stop sign means?
I know from experience traveling in foreign countries. Even in Japan.
For another example, how long did it take you to figure out that that "hamburger" icon was really MENU?
I'm using Chrome Browser. To the right of the address bar there's a star icon. Sorry, I have no idea what that means and have to hover over it - "Bookmark this tab". I have no idea why anyone would associate a star with bookmark. I have no idea how anyone would look up a star icon on google. But I know how to look up "bookmark".
When I open up my Twitter page, there are 5 icons under my picture:
1. two triangles and a dot
2. GIF
3. three cantilevered beams
4. a happy face
5. a car battery with a clock attached
Sorry, I don't know what any of these do. Hovering over them provides no information. (Maybe GIF means add picture, but my pictures are JPGs, not GIFs. What does a happy face do? Inject me with heroin?) I can click on them and find out - but really, what kind of argument is that for "icons are better!"? It isn't any better than randomly turning controls hoping to turn the damned defroster on so I can see, and hoping I don't hit the ejector seat button.
I fully agree with your points on UI icons and flat hamburgers. It repeatedly violates discoverabilty. But to add to your point, most products will already have some form of regionalization. Software will typically have language specific strings, physical products will have instruction manuals and warranties in the local language. In practice the translation effort already happens anyway for non-anglo markets. So even the reservation you mention of learning a foreign language for non-english users is most of the times a non-issue.
Around the time Walter was working on Datalight C, I was working at a computer game company in Austin that most geeks over the age of about 35 have heard of. All decisions of note at this well-regarded company were made by a figure of equal repute, someone with the tech chops of one Steve and the charisma of the other. This guy wasn't a Mac user himself, but there were a few Macs in use around the office, and he fell for the WIMP paradigm hard.
The games in the series he was known for were historically keyboard-driven, but the one we were working on at the time, the sixth, was the first to be developed on the PC rather than the Apple II and also the first to feature a GUI. So everything was icon-based whether it needed to be or not, because "that's how the Mac does it." Hieroglyphics were hot again, who could've seen it coming? Don't complain, just work like an Egyptian.
At the time this flavor of Kool-Aid was being consumed all over the place, from game companies to office/productivity software companies, and it unquestionably all went back to Jobs, or more accurately the cues Jobs took from PARC. We weren't alone in being ordered by management to Think Different(tm) by ripping off some guys in Cupertino.
What’s the takeaway here?
A group of spoiled adults couldn’t be bothered to read an instruction manual or clean something?
But I know that I can't: I can care very effectively about one thing really well (typically oscillating between my job and family). Then there's space left in my brain to be sort-of effective at caring for three or four other things (social life, hobbies, sports, learning, personal growth, etc..). There's a little space in the end for things which are good, but I can't afford to think about more than the minimum amount necessary (voting, taxes, coffee machines, subscription services, recycling, keeping my plants alive, car/motorcycle maintenance, ...).
So the point is, I really really value things which don't require me to care or RTFM, because that frees me up to care and focus more on my job, family and friends. Maybe that's being spoiled, but it feels more to me like a pragmatic approach to mental health and productivity.
That's why $5000 coffee machines normally come with either a maintenance contract, where someone comes around regularly to restock/clean/maintain it, or you have a designated person or department within your company who's job it is to take care of them.
The manual for a new car is an inch thick, and flipping through it while driving trying to figure out how to turn on the defroster is BAD BAD BAD BAD design.