Icons, Usability and Computers
Posted on January 25th, 2006 in Usability | 5 Comments »
Icons Stink — “…is the language of computing something we have to train people into doing, or is it really as easy as we’d like to believe? The answer’s in the icons, but like all pictures, the interpretation is key.” (Source: Mac Dev Center, Author: Tom Bridge)
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5 Responses
I think all icons can never be descriptive enough. If you look at icons used for tools on Internet Explorer like Favorites and Search, it is much easier to understand the Search icon but how would a user know what a Star icons means, which is used for Favorites. I think a tool tip or text associated is need and user should take some time hovering over icons with no text to see the tooltip to learn what this icon represents.
One thing that the forum posts (“Do icons help your sites usability?”) don’t mention is that even if an icon is poorly-designed, it can still help with usability for an individual user, once he/she does understand what the icon means, as it’s faster for the brain to process images than words. I.e., as someone mentioned, the “Paint Bucket” icon may not look much like a paint bucket, and the first time you want to fill with a color, you’ll be lost, but once you figure it out, it will always be faster to look for the icon than to have to read buttons with words. Tooltips can help out in this situation, too. I think it’s always worth it to have an icon available, even if you can’t quite capture the meaning of the action behind it.
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