Usability Forum

Usable Quotes: Icons

By Eddie Lopez. Monday, 26. February 2007, 18:27:11

Unfortunately, the overuse of icons in liueu of text doesn't make a program easier to learn while making it language agnostic. Instead, it makes the program equally undecipherable in all languages.

-Aza Raskin, Command Line for the Common Man: The Command Line Comeback

Great Humanized.com article on words vs. pictures and how they convey meaning, CLIs and GUIs, etc.

Mac Update 2: Electric BoogalooShow me the standards-or- the Red headed step browser*

Comments

Anonymous # 27. February 2007, 04:18

Anonymous writes:

Well Put! I have been acomputer user for 28 years and I find the current interfaces to be extremely aggravating to use. Way to much effort is being put on colorful mindless attention grabbing interfaces. It is actually important that there are no distractions. Of course juncky throw away cars seem to sell best in America also. It all hinges on the standards of the average consumer. (Low)
I am surprised opera doesn't do a better job but they may be catering to a mostly artistic bunch.
Will

Jan Henrik Helmers # 27. February 2007, 14:02

This is a problem. Adding icons to the text does not make sense unless the icons are a better explanation than the text itself. In my opinion the GNOME desktop (for Linux) and The GIMP are examples of icons in menus done right.

Amusingly the KDE desktop (also for Linux) is an example of the opposite - too many icons without a clear message.