Lazycoder

Common usage of icons

Microsoft Team RSS Blog : The orange icon…: “Our goal is to make sure that the icon is something that is understandable by all of our users: novice, advanced, developer, business, international, etc.”

If you have to explain what the icon means, your icon isn’t descriptive enough. Also, if people have to think too long about your icon, they aren’t going to use it. I’m confronted by horrible icon choices in the elevator all the time. Especially when I see someone running towards the door and I want to hold it for them. I’m confronted with two icons.

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and

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So I have to stop and figure out which way the little arrows are going, which is usually enough time to allow the doors to shut and me to feel bad about not having held them. While two buttons marked “Close” and “Open” don’t take long for me to process. The shorter amount of time to process means that I press the correct button and get to hold the door for whatever PhD or Noble Prize winner is trying to get on the elevator with me. Other times I end up pressing the alarm button like an idiot.

Think about stuff like that when you are designing icons. It’s nice to have a stylistic representation of whatever concept you are trying to convey (“See the broken circle represents the openness of the system, meaning the user can now ‘open’ a file”). But the main principle of Interface Darwinism still holds. If people can’t figure out your interface, no matter how pretty it is, they aren’t going to use it.