The Dilemma of Icons

I frequently disable text labels in order to reclaim screen space.

Perhaps it takes a certain kind of person to decipher icons as easily as text. But of course, I don't know all of them already, and so frequently I just go on a journey of discovery by tapping random buttons to see what they do. I would say that's not an efficient way to learn a UI, but what else to do? Documentation sucks!

Lastly, the real curse of icons is forcing support people to attempt to describe, in our native tongue, the appearance of a thing, rather than its plain name. It was deceptively easy to guide a newbie by saying "now click open, then save, now go home" but nobody is going to know what the "hamburger" or "floppy disk" or "share" icons look like, so the verbal mode of communication has been hampered significantly.

Partial reply: I think getting distracted by the menu is a good thing. It really helps you get up to speed with a program. On programs like Total Commander, I know where most things are and I don't spend much time searching for them. On programs like Win11 Paint or even some games (Men of War 2 springs into my mind but others probably qualify too) I just become disorientated. Monochrome stylised white icons aren't really distinct from each other, I constantly get confused between which one is which. So I never actually "learn" the interface or get any faster at using it.

>And on desktops where screens keep getting larger I have the extra real estate for the app to be clearer.

Sadly, this is bucking the trend. More and more designers are thinking mobile and trying to cram everything into very confined spaces.

The saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words." I've found the exchange rate to be more dynamic. Many ideas are better put with words. Others with images. What I take issue with is the idea that words and images are in competition. Each has its own use case. Contorting an image to do the job of a word demonstrates a lack of communicative ability, and vice-versa.

In case you're near a printer right now, the poster you'll find on this page[1] is taped by my washer and I've found it quite helpful!

[1] https://www.parkersdrycleaners.com/2011/05/care-label-tags/

Note: No endorsement of, or affiliation with Parker's Dry Cleaners.

Washing instructions are internationally standardized though, and if you really wanted to you'd look them on your phone.

I don't want a hippy brand to write a 50 lines poem instead. Nor do I want "woogie boogie wash only" jargonning that felt cute to the copy righter, nor do I want to try to understand the Indian instructions.

I might interpret "when icons carried inherent meaning" as something like, "when the physical office desk metaphor was the only game in town". I didn't get much out of the article, but I would agree that the trajectory of icon symbology is necessarily towards the more virtual and more subtle (if that's a point the author is making...).

Using the word “intuitive” is the hallmark of a mediocre interface designer.

You can’t make an “intuitive interface”. What you can make is an interface that is familiar, and consistent, which means people can reasonably anticipate what doing something they haven’t done before will do.

(Good interfaces should also allow for mistake recovery - eg by supporting universal undo - which is something everyone seems to have forgotten)

Even arrows are not uniformly perceived across cultures as showing direction (although you can safely assume most anyone who lives in 21st century globalized modern society will have learned to decode arrows fairly early in life).

The old quote goes that “the only intuitive interface is the nipple; after that it’s all learned” - but that quote was clearly by someone who was never around newborns, because lots of newborns have to be guided to breastfeeding.

> Even the trash can icon had to be explained before it became "intuitive".

Legend has it that the original Mac trash can icon looked a lot like a traditional British mailbox.

Non-hilarity ensued.

Amazing how such basic common sense got lost sometime in the past 15 years. Perhaps using an icon for a 3-5 word phrase describing an abstract idea is daft? Wow! Who would have thought?! (Answer: certainly not any so-called "UX designer" I've met in the past 10 years.)

This is before you even get to the dumbness that ensues by the UX designers getting confused to whether a button that is a toggle should have the icon representing the current state, or the state that clicking it will cause to happen, like every other button in existence. (Think of the Mute button in every videoconferencing app -- at least Zoom still has a text label on it though!)

I'm getting an "access denied" message on your example

The use of icons lies not in understanding it the first time, it’s something that you learn to recognise. And that makes them more recognisable at the long term, or easier to find in moments when speed is of the essence. Like your example of the train. A conductor learned what they meant and trained with them. Just like a dj knows what every icon on his dj table means.

That also means icons don’t have to make sense visually, they just need to be recognised and distinguished.

Text is for when you have time or no idea, icons are for when you have to decide quick and you understand what you are doing.

The dilemma is that as thing become more abstract, making a "self explanatory" icon requires prior knowledge of other abstract concepts from the user.

For example the cloud "obviously" means something on the internet, something like online storage, and you can derive a lot of "self explanatory" icons from there. But what about those who don't understand it?

Funnily enough, I once saw a cloud icon on a piece of software, I thing it was mapping software, I instantly though about something about the internet. It took me a bit of time to realize it was for the weather, I mean, actual clouds.

> A good icon is self explanatory.

So said the ancient Egyptian scribes, and yet they wrote a Rosetta Stone.

“Self explanatory” doesn’t exist. There are only icons that people have seen before (and recognize), and those they haven’t.

Is there a good icon for "save" action, that will work even for people that never see floppy disk?

Your browser probably has two toolbars, one as these shortcut icons is probably on either side to your URL bar. The icons to the left of you URL bar, you are most likely deeply familiar with, so familiar in fact you know their functionality better than if they were worded out with “Back“, “Forward”, or “Reload” (this is 100x true if your browser is in a non-english language; even if that language is your native language). The buttons inside your URL bar are probably more complicated, you probably know what one or two do, maybe if they were replaced by text you could get better of a hint, but if you use them ones, you will probably know what they do afterwards just as well as if they were replaced by text. The icons on the right are probably some branded icons with unique functions that you have installed as plugins. You know what they do because of the brand, this would be equally true of text, and finally you have the hamburger (or the vertical ellipsis). At this point the hamburger (or the vertical ellipsis) has pretty well earned its place among the pause icon on your tape-deck (or, more likely, your VLC digital media player) as a universally recognizable icon.

Now your second toolbar is probably hidden by some hover or keyboard action (in my browser it is reviled by a single press of my left alt key) it is all text and has numerous categories such as view, bookmarks, help, tools, etc. inside these categories there are functions such as copy, synced tabs, troubleshoot, etc. (mine is actually in Icelandic and many of those words I’m seeing for the first time and have no clue what they mean).

If your app has only a few functions putting the correct icon next to the function label can help you navigate to your desired function more easily. If your app has a lot of functions (like your browser, or a document processor) all these icons will be an overkill, so you only design an icon for the most essential/most used functions (back, zoom in, boldface, undo, etc.). If loading a language model is an essential feature in your app, which is often performed, it may help users to have an icon next to the label (and sometimes even in place of the label if the label is complicated). Personally for “load language model” I probably would just use the upload icon (commonly an arrow pointing upwards from a bucket).

I've been saying this for years, and gained no traction. Finally, a fellow traveler! Have plenty of upvotes!

I agree with you.

There's a reason so few modern languages are pictographic.

> Stacked shrinking boxes

I think that one is meant to be a ship.