What I've always found fascinating was that how much easier I've always found words to find and use than images.<p>You'd think little pictograms would be quicker but whenever an interface focuses on using lots of little icons I find it a mental workout to find which one I'm looking for.<p>For example, many people dislike the new gmail layout, but the biggest ux stumble I have is clicking the attach pictogram instead of the the link one. I thought it was interesting that in the results in the article 21% of people reported the reverse, they associated attach with the link pictogram.<p>In RL companies use pictograms because you don't have to localize, but the internet is dynamic and the tooltips are already localized, why not just use words?
Icons are mnemonics, not signposts.<p>Icons alone are never sufficient when someone encounters an interface for the first time, you should always include a text label.<p>New users to an interface will read the text labels, and after time, the icons become a quick mnemonic for them to locate functions they've accessed before.<p>Even more important than visuals or text is location. Our spatial memory has a higher priority than either. In repeated user tests, I've observed that once people become used to a button resting in, say, the top left corner of a UI, they will click there again for the same function, even if the button itself has changed.<p>Don't worry too much about the exact semiotics of your icons. Just keep them reasonably meaningful, clearly distinct from one another, include text labels, and be consistent with where you put them.
I'm always a bit frustrated that Google Docs doesn't have a save icon. It simply says "All changes saved in drive". But you see this doesn't stop my habitual compulsion to press the save icon (or at least do :w in Vim).
Heh, I wrote about this: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/</a><p>The reflection of the real world in the virtual world has to do with abstractions, usually going back to among the earliest of concepts that had a similar function at the time but not necessarily for the current age. Which is why we still have pencils, clouds, houses, and arrows instead of ... try to think of something better.
Scott Hanselman wrote a similar article last year [1]<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Oth...</a>