> Who are they a problem for?
They're a problem for users who haven't used that interface before. Imagine a novice user grappling with binoculars and magnifying glasses.
They're a problem for users who haven't used that interface before. Imagine a novice user grappling with binoculars and magnifying glasses.
Bad designers are the problem, icons are fine. Icons are more efficient. Reading the full word takes longer and recognizing an icon is something the primate brain has developed to excel at over millions of years, in the form of things like predators, prey and brightly colored, specifically patterned fruits shrouded in dense forests.
Pattern recognition runs deep. Icons aren't a problem any more than calling a search function "find" or "browse" or "look for".
> babby: The designers job is to choose sufficiently recognizable icons if they actually want them to be recognized.
You're both right. It depends whether you're focusing on the people using computers today or the (larger, but more distant) people learning to use computers tomorrow.
So, when you're looking for zoom do you want the binoculars or the magnifying glass? Or do you want something else, which you don't know yet?
Search is an empty magnifying glass next to/within a text field.
Knowing that you click on binoculars or a magnifying glass to look for things is absolutely no different to knowing to use the "search" or "find" option in a menu.