I'd just like to add that <i>well established</i> icons are much more readable than text.<p>The prime example that makes me believe this is road signs. In Europe it is pretty easy to drive a car in any country and be able to do it correctly, IF you are used to European road signage. Driving a car in USA when used to European signage is difficult. The signs in USA more often have text, but it is not always more understandable than an icon. What does "PED XING" mean, and how much time and energy do you have to dechiffer it while driving? (It took me days to realize that it is probably a contraction of "pedestrian crossing") Another example; it takes much more effort to understand what "SLIDES" might mean than it takes to recognize a pictogram of sliding rocks. When the text is not immediately understandable, you have to recognize it from earlier. This is similar to icons that are not immediately understandable.<p>My take-away here is that it takes lots of effort to make good descriptive text. Using text instead of icons is not a simple solution for the problem described in the article. It takes effort to communicate clearly anyway :)
Can't tell you how many times I've had to tell people "I read <i>english</i>, not <i>heiroglyphics</i>.<p>Microsoft bothered the heck out of me - in an era when screens are getting larger, they drop the text labels off of the taskbar. MS is the <i>last</i> company that should be relying on their users' ability to recognize icons since htey completely change the shortcut icons for the whole MS Office suite and Visual Studio every release.
We used to call this Mystery Meat navigation: just symbols or pictures without words.<p>I still hate icons standing on their own, unless they're extremely clear and unambiguous. Even then, they'll be unclear and ambiguous to <i>someone</i> out there.<p>Just add a label. Even when we've been skeptical that words wouldn't fit in with our design, that they'd clutter or confuse; we've always found a way to make the labels fit in, and our usability has been much improved for it.<p>People simply don't ask questions anymore—it worked better than we could have hoped.
<a href="http://imgur.com/TdrXpxS.png" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/TdrXpxS.png</a><p>Funny. I was thinking a non-disappearing modal on a mobile browser would be a fairly cardinal UX mistake. Call me crazy.
I really like the "one way street" sign in this blog post because it reminds me of our first trip to Germany, where we were bemused at the incredible number of roads Munich had all named "Einbahnstraße".
Very good overview on the subject of icon usability is <a href="http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1795/when-to-use-icons-vs-icons-with-text-vs-just-text-links" rel="nofollow">http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1795/when-to-use-icons...</a><p>Research roughly says that icons with text are best and only text is better than only icons.
The problem with text instead of icons is that<p>a)Its needs translation per language and
b)it takes longer to parse/process.<p>The weather information in iOS7's "Today" notification is an example (<a href="http://applenapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ios_7_6_notification_center.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://applenapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ios_7_6_not...</a>). It takes much longer to read the exact weather information than just seeing a weather icon and getting it (IMHO).<p>In this article's case, it seems he use something that wasn't "iconic" as an icon.
> it’s the crave button. It’s so primitive an action that we overlooked it.<p>What is "crave" in this context? This is already an unconventional action for an interface. Am I to assume that you are trying a new variation on "like" / "favorite"? Since it doesn't use a conventional name, does it do something different? If it is just essentially a "like" action, do you have sufficient reason to break from convention? If an affluent white male interface-creating technologist in the bay area like me doesn't immediately know what the action does, maybe the unconventional icon isn't the only deviation from convention that's causing confusion.
The original author may have meant "cardinal" (primary) rather than "carnal" (of the flesh, generally used as a synonym for "sexual" in modern English).
A modal that you can't dismiss isn't a great idea either, with it taking nearly half of my phone's viewing area.<p><a href="http://imgur.com/3K2CUG1" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/3K2CUG1</a>
> "The biggest culprit of a simple icon turning villain is the elevator at my apartment. You’d think how much more simpler can this get. Up to go up and vice versa, isn’t it?"<p>I don't understand. Is this not the case?<p>> "Until you realize that people use this to “bring the elevator up” and to “bring the elevator down”."<p>I think they're wrong, but now I'm doubting myself!<p>> "I often go from my top floor to the parking with switches in-between and peeps asking “Going up or down?”"<p>...everything I thought I knew is a lie.
> Yet. Yet… the top UX myth of all time is, icons enhance usability<p>Let's see: Given an icon, how to
I pronounce it, spell it, in case
I don't know what it means
look it up
in a dictionary? I can't.<p>Long ago I decided that a good user
interface should go light on icons.<p>In the Web site I'm building,
the screens I'm building have no
icons at all. Instead there are
some push buttons with descriptive
English
words inside them and some links
as words. And each substantive
page has a link "Help" that explains
in detail how to use the page.<p>Civilization used to have icons,
but then got the Roman
alphabet!<p>Further, for another "cardinal UX mistake",
a user will never have to run experiments
and explore the user interface (UI)
to discover how to use the Web site.<p>Further, for another "cardinal UX mistake",
the Web site has no undefined acronyms
or terminology. Each word is used in
its simple dictionary meaning or
otherwise has its special meaning
defined and explained.<p>E.g., "UX" abbreviates 'user experience'?
Coincidentally, with German signs being mentioned in the article, German public service typography, the signs and so on, is <i>gorgeous</i>. Really well designed.<p>There's the guy whose company did stuff for BFG and the railways talking about some of his work here:<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/30008631" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/30008631</a>
Being myself a UI/UX designer,"we get deeply involved in the product buildup to a point that an emoticon like thing can often seem implicit. Why in the world would someone not get it? It’s so implicit to us that it’s never even a point of discussion or question." I couldn't agree more and have personally experienced a lot of times. So I have made a habit of testing everything with friends and first time users. It really effects and help improve UX a LOT.<p>User testing should really be focused more.<p>For the case of icons and text.I really feel that the situation and context is important. Like for road sign I strongly feel using combination of icon and text really works the best.
Either go full text actions or only icons. You can't have both because of the reduced space and reduce the ammount information you need to digest. Also, users can experiment with your UI/UX, so the camera example doesn't apply.
this is better known as 'mystery meat' navigation and google is one of its most famous adherents<p>but then again, google has shown again and again that they know absolutely nothing about UX or UI
Based on this article, I think Twitch.tv actually handles UX very well.<p><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/directory" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/directory</a><p>Initially, you see the larger navigation bar which gives you clear definition to where everything is; however, once you've become familiar with the site, you have the option to shrink the bar down to just the essential icons.<p>The problem is we're not sure what icons users 'get', which is why there was so much argument when the Windows 'Start' button removed the wording (and in Window 8's case, the button). If you didn't recognize the icon, the wording re-enforced it. But how many non-techie's immediately understand three circles, 2 lines, in the shape of > means 'Share Online'? How many even get B means 'Bold'?<p>This is an issue I've started to research since becoming an instructor for 'Intro to Computers'. What are some of the things people really need to learn to use the computer (instead of the MS Office stereotypical course). As time moves forward (and as UX designers pick standards), I can make the course more 'ambiguous', so any OS/Browser/Program and be used by the student in no time.
I hope somebody from the Firefox OS team reads this: most of their apps have "mystery buttons" where the only way to figure out what they do is to press them. It took me 3 tries to find out which button to use to write a new tweet on their tweeter app.<p>On a related note a while ago we were discussing this new generation of kids will probably never come across a floppy disk, yet it's almost a UI convention to use the floppy icon for the Save function.<p>EDIT: Grammar
"Yet. Yet… the top UX myth of all time is, icons enhance usability"<p>It's a fact that it is easier and faster to comprehend images than words. I think the only situation this isn't true is when you are icons aren't clear. You can't use icons for obscure things or things that don't have an established universal recognition for exactly the reason this article describes. That's why everyone always recognizes a picture of an old school telephone versus a smart phone as an icon in front of something like a phone number.<p>I think the "Cardinal" UX mistake made here was that, not using an icon over text.
So true! I've always followed the guideline that, in general, icons should be viewed as purely decorative. Go ahead and add them for aesthetic purposes, but avoid making them the sole indication of something's function.<p>I'd make an exception, however, for some extremely common icons, such as the B, I, and X icons for "bold", "italic", and "close".
I'm a big fan of The Noun Project. This site has helped me on many occasions. <a href="http://thenounproject.com/" rel="nofollow">http://thenounproject.com/</a>
Now how do you convince graphic designers and marketing people that this matters more than "branding" or "impact" or looking "cleaner" or any of the other vague feelings-based reasons they give to deliberately make the user experience bad? I'm constantly dealing with people who insist on making the user interface bad because they think it is part of their branding and that matters more. And no amount of explaining "you are making less money by having fewer people able to use your app" seems to convince them.