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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I literally can't tell what the author is arguing against or for.

All the example table images seem fine, and have no captions saying whether they're supposed to be examples of good usage or bad usage.

So either I have no idea what "bad" examples of icon usage are because the author doesn't show any, or the author thinks some or all of them are bad when, to me, the icon+text+color examples seem great (and one figure caption indicates icons+labels are best)?

Yet the author continues to argue against icons and to use text instead? But never says whether icons+labels are actually better than just text, so we should use them in combination?

I'm baffled. For an article arguing for greater clarity, the article itself couldn't be less clear.

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Hey, author here, I'll attempt to clarify.

In a data grid or table the relative cognitive load of the page is already very high. Adding iconography to the table body content is often unnecessary and increases visual noise, processing requirements, and generally reduces readability/scanability.

I've always felt that icons in this context are a risk or liability instead of a strength. I decided to info dump my findings to my team then published it as an article.

I probably could use a good editor to help me next time!

I agree that your screenshots doesn't make any sense in relation with the content of your text. It's like image randomly spread along the text without no meaningful relation. So much that I was wondering if it was not an AI generated article or partially.

Everyone would expect that you show example of good and bad UX for each point that you are making.

Making me see confirm by myself with example that doing X is clearly looking nicer to understand than doing Y.

I think you need to show examples of this bad usage, then.

Your first image has zero icons in the rows. It has album covers but those aren't icons.

Your second and third images show very usage that combines text, color, and relatively standard icons like checkmarks, X's, or in-progress. These are good and if you're trying to suggest these reduce readability, scannability, or add noise, then I'm frankly baffled.

Your third image also shows profile images, but again those are not icons.

So what are you arguing against? I can't ever remember coming across icons in a datagrid that "added to the relative cognitive load". And if you're arguing against checkmarks or X's, I don't think your arguments hold up.

But even with "real" icons -- like, I've seen icons to show if a software package is for Windows or Mac or Linux. If a row is a TV show or a movie. If it's one file or an archive. If there's a PDF file download attached. An alarm icon for something past due. But these all seem totally fine and helpful. They're generally linked to a major feature of the platform that everybody understands, and help scannability.

Without clear examples of what you're arguing against, I'm frankly completely lost.

In-line images should almost always include a caption, especially in a "do this and not that" type of piece

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