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> Jef Raskin ("The Humane Interface", Addison-Wesley, 2000) reports some data
> on how icons typically prove to be incomprehensible to users unless the
> icons are accompanied some form of documentation; this supports my own
> observations that once users learn what a particularly obscure collection of
> dots represents, they no longer try to decipher the image, but simply
> remember that the "print" icon is the third one from the left, the delete
> icon is the fourth one from the right, and so on. I believe that William
> Horton has also written about this fairly frequently going back about a
> decade, though I don't know whether he explicitly mentions this in his more
> recent book on icon design.
After reading this thread, I stood back and thought a moment:
Icons were originally introduced as an easy, friendly way of using
software. As Geoff briefly shows, they often don't fill this function.
The fact that mouseover help is now routinely used is an indirect
recognition of this fact. Yet icons continue to be used.
For an industry that prides itself on being progressive and that is only
a couple of decades old, software seems to have developed some very
rigid conventions.
I wonder if text buttons aren't a better alternative? In practice,
systems designed for entry-level clerks often use buttons instead icons.
Of course, you can't squeeze as many buttons in a space as icons, but at
least you can read them.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com
"Ordinary people...are nothing without the ordinary truth, nothing at
all. They die without it: without innocence or candour. Indeed the very
great majority kill themselves long long before their time. Live as
children; grow pale as adolescents; show a flash of life in love; die in
their twenties and join the poor creatures that creep angry and restless
about the earth."
-Patrick O'Brian, "H.M.S. Surprise"
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