
Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore - joeyespo
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx
======
moocow01
The problem is that if we modernized most of our iconography, a heck of a lot
of things won't be able to be represented simply with something distinctive
enough. This is largely due to what I'll call the merging of things into the
same form largely driven by computing. For example...

Icon for a phone - rectangular screen

Icon for a TV - rectangular screen

Icon for a tablet - rectangular screen

Icon for a camera - rectangular screen (with a little dot in the corner)

Icon for a video recorder - rectangular screen (with a little dot in the
corner)

Its true that most icons refer and represent a visual form of something from a
decade or more ago. But what do you replace them with that will be any better
when a lot of these things have no distinctive visual form anymore?

~~~
shanselman
Exactly, I suspect there is nothing we can replace it with. A TV with rabbit
ears will always be a TV - perhaps a hundred years from now?

~~~
drostie
This "nothing we can replace it with" sounded wrong to me, so I spent a moment
trying to quickly draw on my tablet some possible alternate metaphors for many
of the things used in this article, and I came up with these:

<http://drostie.org/icons.png>

(Disclaimer: my ability to draw is very limited so this looks unintentionally
minimalist, because my "boxes" are just squares.)

You could have some convention which says, say, "the present file is a sort of
ball or rounded object, the filesystem is a box where we can put our balls,
the clipboard is some sort of stack of stuff," and so forth. Phones could look
more like mobiles do now, if you put them in a bit of perspective and gave
them a keypad. Rather than using the page for a generic document, we have the
ball for that purpose, so we use the page instead to indicate printing, since
you're converting the ball into a piece of paper.

I think wrenches, magnifying glasses, and binoculars can stay as iconic things
-- but since people now use magnifying glasses for "zoom" we should perhaps
stabilize on binoculars for "search"/"find". (And come on, I'm not Sherlock
Holmes. I'm not trying to find a _clue_ , I'm trying to find _last night's
homework_.)

Email is much trickier; if we don't keep using envelopes, I don't know how we
would iconify that.

~~~
falcojr
I like the look of those, but I did laugh when I saw the cell phone with an
antenna on the top.

~~~
drostie
I actually spent fifteen minutes or so going back and forth on that. My old
cell phone had one, perhaps for style, yet my new phone doesn't. And I was
thinking a lot about that bizarre V-shaped TV antenna, too. ^_^

------
tomflack
This is awfully condescending towards people in their twenties and younger.

> Want to indicate Settings or Setup to a twenty something? Show them a tool
> they've never used in their lives.

> If you don't know who Johnny Carson is, how could you know that this is a
> old-style microphone?

> No one under 30 has seen a Polaroid in years but we keep using them for
> icons.

We don't live in a cultural vacuum where everything that existed prior to our
birth ceases to exist or be represented. We watch old movies, we watch old TV,
we read old books and we see old photographs.

Some things go missing and some things stick around. The icons that stop
having a useful meaning will either disappear or be transformed and some icons
will come to be a somewhat abstract representation of what they do, even if
they're based on things that existed in the past.

I don't understand people's obsession with telling everyone they should
modernize their icons - if you think so, then you should do it. See how your
users react.

~~~
davidjohnstone
I didn't like the post as much as I expected to.

The floppy disk as an icon for save is a legitimate complaint, in the sense
that it is early technology that has been deprecated by later technology, and
[almost] nobody will ever use one again.

That said, good luck finding a new icon. The difficulty is that the concept of
"saving" only came about with computers, and unlike zooming or even grouping
things together in folders, finding a real-life pictorial representation of
saving is... difficult.

But the others... The last time I checked, bookmarks, calendars, envelopes,
magnifying glasses, and screwdrivers all exist in the real world and are used
regularly by a lot of people, and they aren't going to go away any time soon.

Also, it's not hard to find microphones today that look a lot like the one in
the icon.

~~~
DanBC
I'm glad we're using a floppy disk rather than the alternative (dead now)
"piggy bank".

Imagine how confused most people are seeing a tiny pig in the tool bar. It's
an effort to get from "little pig" to "piggy bank" to "save". And that's for
people with english as a first language.

------
acheron
There's a good article to be written on this subject, but this isn't it.

"folders": we can go back to "directories" if you'd like. It's still what I
say most of the time.

"wrenches/screwdrivers/gears": This was the most baffling one. Who's never
used a screwdriver? And he says it as if it's obvious.

"phone": 75% of the US still has a landline (as of a year ago anyway), so I
find "you haven't used this in 20 years" to be a rather dumb statement too.

"tv antenna": Antennas have actually come back recently when broadcast
stations switched to digital and HD feeds. This would have been a better
criticism ten years ago, and makes him the one that sounds out of date.

When I saw the article title, I figured "floppy disk" = "save". And sure,
that's somewhat valid. But as others have pointed out, it's idiomatic. It
happens in language all the time: people still say that someone is given "free
rein" even if nobody involved has ever ridden a horse.

~~~
landhar
I agree, I was very surprised that he doesn't even mention the "hourglass".
It's true that it's less and less frequent but I would argue that it's more
common than the floppy disk.

~~~
eropple
I chuckled when I read your post, because at TripAdvisor we have one in every
meeting room. And they actually get used.

------
gdubs
Fun read. However, if the suggestion is that we force ourselves to constantly
update iconography because the metaphors are outdated, I don't agree. Sailors
still say "knots", but I bet young ones don't all know why. People say
"breadboard" all of the time when building electronics.

Similarly, the very letters of our language evolved out of symbols that meant
something to some humans long ago, just as words have an etymology.

People simply start to associate icon with action. Mail on my Mac is
represented by a postage stamp. I never realized that until I just analyzed
it. Good icons are subconscious like that.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
For us young ones: How do sea navigators measure their ships speed?
<http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae400.cfm>

~~~
benholmen
Another interesting word is 'log' which we use daily in a digital sense but it
has a very physical nautical origin:

log: _"from log (n.1) which is so called because a wooden float at the end of
a line was cast out to measure a ship's speed. General sense by 1913."_

Source:
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=log&allowed_in_...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=log&allowed_in_frame=0)

------
mindstab
I'd love to go to schools and get kids in groups like <15years or <10 years
and ask them to design icons for these things and see what they come up with.
They have a lot less cultural history and technological history. might be
interesting.

Or maybe they've learned all these icons and while not getting what they did
mean, they understand what they mean now, like letters of a new alphabet. Like
how many Asian script characters are descendants of more obvious pictograms of
actions. They still have meaning even if they've evolved a bit and even
changed.

~~~
MBlume
From the stackoverflow thread linked by rapidnsnail:

> I tried this on my 9 and 13 year old nephews. I asked what does this button
> mean? "Save" they both answered immediately. Then I asked what the image
> looks like? They had no idea - not even a suggestion (which is fair since
> they haven't ever seen a disk). So I guess the meaning has overriden the
> image itself in the icon so we're stuck with it.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-
still-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-still-a-
floppy-disk)

~~~
roc
Well that particular one we don't have to worry about. The expectation of
having to explicitly 'save' an electronic file is (finally) on its way out.

~~~
maaku
Really? Than what do you call the action of making particular snapshots of
file state?

~~~
shanselman
A camera? (snapshot)

~~~
user24
What's a camera? You mean the photo app on my smartphone?

------
TwistedWeasel
The idea that people don't know what a cog or a wrench is seems like the
author is taking this a step too far. I wouldn't call those things "shrouded
in mystery".

Similarly there are still plenty of microphones that look like that, they're
professional microphones, not "old fashioned" ones.

~~~
batista
Plus, once a reference is established (like the floppy disk) it's idiotic to
always replace it with the latest tech (we'd have zip drives in the nineties,
usb drives in the '00s, the cloud today, etc etc..)

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
We might similarly go to another extreme and phase out the use of 'alpha' and
'beta', or just the ancient Greek alphabet altogether.

It's thousands of years old, thus despite our ability to record and learn from
history, we should replace it with something more modern.

~~~
philwelch
If you phased out "alpha" and "beta", you'd have to call the alphabet the
aybee.

~~~
NLips
A lot of people DO call it the "Ay-bee-see"

------
brc
This goes back a lot further than computer icons.

Road signs for railway crossings still show steam trains. Men/Women signs for
toilets show women in skirts that nobody wears, on images that hardly resemble
people at all.

My car has a snowflake for the AC button, even though snow doesn't come out of
the vents when you switch it on.

Interestingly, signs that ban music players in certain areas now look like Gen
1 iPods, even though a modern iPod (or any other player) doesn't have a
clickwheel.

The point is that, iconography is meant to be clear and concise. As long as
everyone agrees on what something stands for, then it doesn't matter what that
is. Generally, that thing refers to a classic image of a thing, because the
original shape will always be associated with the modern version.

~~~
bazzargh
Indeed. This one used to mystify us on the UK driving test 25 years ago - way
older than steam trains, and presumably anachronistic even when it was
standardised:
[http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1848/PreviewComp/Su...](http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1848/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1848-161827.jpg)

It's not a UK sign. Most Europeans will recognize it, but I doubt it travels
well, and even where it has local currency, many peoples _grandparents_ won't
remember these in real life.

~~~
brc
I recognised that one as a horn, but I had no idea what the connection to post
is, and still don't. Just took it for one of those weird corporate logos that
meant something to someone at some point but doesn't anymore.

~~~
bazzargh
Here's the explanation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_horn>

 _The post horn...used to signal the arrival or departure of a post rider or
mail coach. It was used especially by postilions of the 18th and 19th
centuries...The instrument is still used as the logo of national post services
in many countries._

The logo I posted was for the German mail service, but you'll see variations
of that image used to mean 'post' all over Europe, and in Australia.

------
nsmartt
I have a handset in my house.

Envelopes are still used for lots of things. I still get mail.

I use screwdrivers pretty often, and I have access to wrenches.

I recognize the old microphones from movies (and even if I didn't, they look
similar to newer mics.)

I've also used a polaroid in the past 5 years.

I've also seen TV sets with "rabbit ears" in the past 5 years.

The others I'm at least familiar with. I'm 18.

~~~
DavidAbrams
Yep. I'm pretty sure Blue and others sell mics designed to look exactly like
those old chrome ones.

~~~
cdcarter
Well many large diaphragm condenser mics look like that because that's what
the footprint of that kind of microphone is! And Shure still faithfully makes
the Super 55, your iconic "Elvis mic."

------
radley
That is not a floppy disk. It's a Save icon.

See the difference?

~~~
pmiller2
| <\- Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

~~~
shanselman
Touché ;)

------
holyjaw
The difficult part about reading this thread was having to ask, after every
point, "well, then what?"

Out computer verbs are based off of (admittedly, maybe outdated) similar
verbs. Our electronic work mirrors our physical work solely because of the
limitations of our language constructs. I have it on good authority that there
is not a single language that has words that that specifically define what we
do on a computer that would be better suited and more efficient than a
physical-describing counterpart.

So, as mentioned earlier, the floppy metaphor: OK, I get it. But clipboards,
bookmarks, Manila folders? How would you describe an object that lets you take
information from one place to another in 32px? What physical object are you
aware of that allows you to mark your place amidst a vast density of
information? Don't even get me started on the folders.

It's coy to label them "old-people icons" -- it's clever, I dig it -- but if
tomorrow we were to unveil a new set of nouns and verbs to describe computer
objects, the reigning argument would be that they never made sense at all.

And have fun trying to explain to your grandfather/mother/nephew how to uses
computer without having any real-world jargon to borrow from.

------
MCompeau
This discourse goes beyond the anachronistic references indicated by these
icons and calls into question our entire system of interface metaphors. At one
point in time imagining the information stored on your computer as a system of
"files" and "folders" was pivotal in transitioning a society from the physical
world to the digital one. Now that the transition is largely complete and many
people are coming of age who have never known a world without computers, its
time to move beyond anachronistic metaphors. We must discover new means of
interaction that take advantage of the unique features of the digital medium.

~~~
batista
> _Now that the transition is largely complete and many people are coming of
> age who have never known a world without computers, its time to move beyond
> anachronistic metaphors._

They might have been metaphors once, now they are idioms.

The people who "have never known a world without computers" have also never
known a world where there weren't filesystem folders and files.

~~~
mietek
iOS devices mostly does away with both concepts, and I hear they've sold a
few.

------
drewmclellan
What's really interesting is that a lot of these rudiments (save, open, copy,
paste, print) simply do not require icons in modern software.

I can't remember the last time I saw a save icon in any of the software I use.
Not because saving has gone away, but because it's so fundamental to document-
based applications that it doesn't need a dedicated button to call it out, and
having one just wastes space. Saving isn't special functionality requiring an
icon - you either use File>Save, or Cmd/Ctrl-S, or even just close the
document and follow the prompt to save.

Copy, paste, open, these things don't need to take up valuable interface space
as if they're some novelty functionality that uses must carefully be
introduced to. We don't need a new save icon, because we don't need a save
icon at all.

------
paulsutter
Great thought provoking article.

A general tone of "isn't this interesting" rather than "isn't this stupid",
might reduce the negative reactions.

It never occurred to me before that the use of physical objects for software
functionality may be transitory. Clearly these icons do work today (and their
use is not stupid), but it's probably a matter of time that a new approach may
be needed.

~~~
shanselman
Thanks, that is a good point. I was aiming for "isn't this silly" but your
point is well taken.

~~~
tallpapab
Clearly a thought provoking article none the less.

------
tricolon
While I support the point behind this article, some of them are... not on
point.

> Want to indicate Settings or Setup to a twenty something? Show them a tool
> they've never used in their lives.

What have screwdrivers and wrenches been replaced with?

~~~
StavrosK
Who cares? A floppy disk nowadays is the thing that indicates "save", and
that's it. You don't have to have seen a floppy disk to know that it's the
save icon. If that were the case, company logos would be objects. A swoosh is
Nike, and that's that.

~~~
dpcan
Sure, but if you're not old enough to know what a floppy disk is, someone
would first have to tell you that the floppy disk was the save icon. I think
the op's point is that icons are no longer making the user experience
intuitive, they are actually adding another step. Young people have to figure
out what they represent first before they use them where the point of an icon
is to eliminate that step.

~~~
StavrosK
Definitely, but I didn't know what a clipboard was before I started copying
and pasting (text on the computer)... You probably learn which button is
"Save" when learning what saving actually is, I don't know how intuitive the
pictograms for these actions can be.

------
WalterBright
I found it bizarre (and sad) that the author believes that a screwdriver and
wrench are somehow only tools for old people, that 20-somethings would have
never wielded one in their life?

------
smutticus
iconic -- executed according to a convention or tradition (reference.com)

Isn't the whole idea of updating traditions a little silly. They're
traditions. We don't follow them because they make sense. We follow them
because the people before us followed them.

100 years from now we'll still need a symbol to conceptualize saving
something. The other ones might go away but we'll probably still need to save
our work. I expect the floppy to still symbolize this. The users at the time
will not understand what a floppy is. But unless there is good reason to upend
convention why bother.

Just look at all the linguistic idioms we retain from yesteryear.

I don't have any axe to grind with icons. But tradition is nothing to sneeze
at. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

~~~
epo
Absolutely, icons are... iconic. The whole point is that we know what they
mean, not they are a literal representation of the object or concept being
designated.

------
crazygringo
This blog post is fairly useless without proposals that do a better job of
communicating these concepts. It almost seems that the author wants to do away
with metaphors entirely? If we aren't going to use an address book as an icon
for our list of contacts, then what on earth are we _going_ to use??

~~~
Raphael
The contacts icon could resemble a person.

------
ktrgardiner
The article began with an introduction to what could have been a really great
dialogue. Why do those who didn't experience the inspiration for icons still
inherently understand them? Yet it dropped that in favor of the same schtick
for each icon.

~~~
JadeNB
I think that the point, which the article may miss, is that we _don't_
inherently understand them. We have to be _taught_ to understand them—but we
only have to be taught _once_ to use a given set of icons, so it's good to use
the same ones other people use, even if they're meaningless.

(I'd draw an analogy to "Why do we inherently understand menu items written in
English?" We don't _inherently_ understand them (witness non-English
speakers); we just get to draw on our existing familiarity with English to
make the understanding easier.)

------
evoxed
Around halfway through I jotted down a few thoughts. I like and appreciate
people thinking about this sort of thing however, so I'm not saying any of
this to offend.

> I don't see any reason that we couldn't be storing our files in abstract
> squares rather than folders in the sky.

...because they're called folders, and we know how to use them? If I said,
"Here, have a square," is your first instinct really to think oh! that must be
for putting stuff in/on? Sure, you can abstract them to just a symbol but it's
unnecessary. It's not like the system cares what you call it or how you choose
to display it.

> The world's most advanced phones include an icon that looks like a phone
> handset that you haven't touched in 20 years, unless you've used a pay phone
> recently.

I have in fact, but that's not the point. Again, we know the shape. There
aren't many things it could be besides a phone. You could show someone a
glossy brick I guess, but what good would that do? The best alternative I can
think of would be something like a speaker or microphone, but where's the
argument that that would actually be better?

> At some time in the past the magnifying glass became the "search everywhere"
> icon, but for some reason binoculars are for searching within a document.

I'm just now realizing that he must be thinking of a specific piece of
software. I gathered he was on Windows, now I see he worked at MS. Is this
Office? This one I agree with, but it sounds like a quirky error made by some
engineer or perhaps phony UX consultant. Same goes for the clipboard– hell if
I know why MS would use that icon for paste, but in no other software that I
can think of is that normal.

> Envelopes

Same thing as folders. So our terminology expanded to cover abstract digital
entities, but that doesn't make it a hinderance to our intuition. Folders,
packages, envelopes... maybe they're too nostalgic for the bold futurist, but
generally it's about as practical as you can get.

> Wrenches and Gears Who hasn't used a screwdriver? Or never seen a wrench?
> Even the people who don't own one _probably_ know what it is. I'm
> indifferent to the gears/tools thing. It still makes sense, but I'm open to
> new ideas– preferably a little more clever than a circuitboard.

> Microphones For speech recognition, would an ear be better? I think most
> people would get the microphone bit simply from watching cartoons,
> talkshows, album covers etc... but I admit this will likely be more foreign
> in the future, and is already disconnected from people in developing
> countries without that much media exposure (although they apparently have an
> iPhone/Pad/Pod).

> Photography It's kitsch. It still makes sense because the alternative to a
> square with a border is a square without a border. But for all of us who
> still use medium/large format cameras from time to time or for work, we can
> simply pretend. Lenses are a-OK.

> Televisions Actually, for the large number of people who gave up cable for
> hulu and netflix but still want to catch the news– yes! I do have rabbit
> ears! Maybe it's a little too retro for most video icons, but again– it till
> makes sense, it just may be better suited to apps that show live broadcasts.

> Carbon Copies and Blueprints Eh, so the term's (carbon copy) a bit outdated.
> But then again, when was the last time I "pasted" a document together? Yeah,
> Drawing I. As for blueprints... it makes sense for XCode right? And CAD. We
> may not use blueprints so often anymore, but it's less ambiguous than
> "construction documents," which might as well be "layouts". Which might as
> well be squares with a shape on them. Etc...

Basically, this would be a far more interesting post if the author would go
further into making actual suggestions. Some of it makes sense because it's
intuitive, some of it makes sense because we're _used_ to it. If you want to
correct the latter, you've got to show something what's better.

Edit: ouch, that's an ugly post. Not sure if I can format it in any way.

Also, I'm looking forward to seeing what people suggest in the discussion
here. It's an interesting topic for sure (and I'm sure there will be plenty of
people to disagree with me).

~~~
bitwize
* ...because they're called folders, and we know how to use them?*

Historically they were called _directories_ , which I would love to see a
return to from the wrong and infantilizing "folders".

~~~
bdunbar
_which I would love to see a return to from the wrong and infantilizing
"folders"._

Probably too late. I work with nice guys, progammers in their late 20s,
mid-30s, who have only ever known those as 'folders'.

By convention at work if it's on a unix-y OS it's a directory, if Windows it's
a folder. It's just easier that way.

~~~
shanselman
Good distinction. I hear Mac folks uses both, usually depending on where they
started.

~~~
rufus_t
I use both myself, depending on whether I'm using the mouse or a terminal,
i.e. I "open a folder" but "list a directory". I've heard others do the same.

------
JulianMorrison
It seems to me that what we are doing is creating new _ideograms_ \- that
their icon nature will soon enough be beside the point, because they will be
something closer to letters, like 漢字.

------
Tloewald
Icons are becoming dead metaphors, which is fine. We pick concrete concepts to
represent abstract processes and eventually the concrete concept becomes
obsolete. This is exactly what happens with language -- should we stop using
the word "deadline" because we've forgotten what it used to mean before it
became a metaphor for a due date?

~~~
twelvechairs
I agree completely. Just because the original uses have stopped being so
common doesn't mean the icons are bad now. In language terms, you could
compare this to street names - very few people would know why the street they
live on is named that way - its just useful that it has a name so people can
find it.

------
wtvanhest
Back in my day we didn't care what the icons looked like. I had to use a mouse
with hard to move wheel to scroll all the way across a 10 inch screen! And I
liked it!

The entire internet was AOL! It took 30 minutes from the time you turned on
the computer to the time you loaded your first website. That is when you got
all your thinking done!

~~~
tallpapab
Oh yeah? I'm so old that my mouse was hairy and used to squeak and vomit when
I squeezed it.

------
josephcooney
There was a discussion on Reddit about this a few days ago:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t4z2o/the_save_ic...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t4z2o/the_save_icon_is_a_floppy_disk_and_everyone_still/)

As pointed out by Mike Kazarnowicz in the comments of Scott's post.

Coincidence or cherry-picking?

~~~
shanselman
Coincidence. We had been tweeting about this a few days ago and many of the
ideas were from my followers. Then my coworker Pete showed me his 2008 post on
the topic [http://10rem.net/blog/2008/11/18/when-will-the-floppy-
disk-d...](http://10rem.net/blog/2008/11/18/when-will-the-floppy-disk-die-as-
a-save-icon) and later after I wrote it, the StackOverflow question
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-
still-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-still-a-
floppy-disk)

------
psylence519
How could you possibly associate an object with an action without first
intimately knowing the object's function?

And when did we all get rid of wrenches? I didn't get that memo.

------
stretchwithme
We started using horsepower to describe how much power an engine has and that
has nothing to do with horses. And last I heard, many of us are still
measuring things in feet.

Conventions hang on for generations because speaking a common language is more
important than being up to date.

~~~
ssdsa
Well, horsepower has absolutely something to do with horses:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower> "Horsepower was originally defined
to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in
continuous operation."

~~~
stretchwithme
Yes, of course. I meant horses have nothing to do with engines. Nobody today
is going to compare the power of a car to what they know about horses.

------
joejohnson
Clipboards are are everywhere: sexy business men and ladies in movies; gym
coaches; bitchy stage managers; kids use them in school occasionally, etc.

------
andyjohnson0
I thought that the article did a good job of explaining the problem of changes
in the world making things change appearance or shape, but not some other
causes of icons not making sense.

To me, icons indicating actions (save, print, etc) work well when they depict
(wholly or partly) a physical object that is obviously used to enact that
action. I assume that this is because our visual cortex is tuned to recognise
physical objects that do actions, not visual representations of actions
themselves. We see a depiction of a hammer and know that its for driving
nails, but its hard to depict driving nails without depicting a hammer. You
could presumably do it (i'm not a graphic designer) but you're making people
work harder to understand your depiction.

The problem is that sometimes changes in the world result in the recognisable
physical object no-longer being recognisable and/or physical.

This can happen we make an action abstract ("save to floppy" becomes "save to
cloud storage"), virtualise an action ("pick up phone and talk" becomes "make
skype call using laptop"), or merge a once-external object into a multi-
function object ("save to floppy" becomes "save to internal disk"). (What
others have I missed?)

I don't know what to do about this. You could use a logo or graphical
device/convention to indicate actions (e.g. skype logo indicates make a voice
call) but you're also increasing the cognitive load on the user of the
interface and increasing visual clutter.

~~~
Angostura
Since we are still going with file and folder, why not make the metaphor
complete and go with a filing cabinet with an arrow either directed towards or
away from an open drawer.

------
LyleK
Why do we even have a save icon function anymore anyway? Just to torture
people who forgot to save their file? Google Docs doesn't have a save button
because it is _saving all the time_. Why would you not want to save what you
are doing? Why is _not saving_ the default? (Alan Cooper made this argument in
About Face in 1995.)

Also, if you want to talk about outdated terminology, theres "disk" and
"drive". These are being incorrectly applied to flash/solid state storage.
They do apply to hard disk drives, and optical media.

~~~
grkvlt
> Why would you not want to save what you are doing?

Because the document is public, and you don't want work-in-progress to be
shared until it is complete?

~~~
jeffool
Don't publicly share the document until it's finished?

------
jberryman
We do the same thing with written language (no one knows or questions where
e.g. "pull out all the stops" comes from but it doesn't matter), so why should
our visual language be any different?

~~~
NLips
On the other hand, pipe-organs are not outdated, whereas floppy disks are (for
most of us).

------
slavak
I think some of those are pushing it quite a bit...

Printed books aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable future (and I'm pretty
sure all young people know what they are, even if they're not really into
reading); the (Exchange-connected VoIP) phone on my desk at the office still
has a handset shaped exactly like the icon; and what kind of magical sci-fi
world does the author live in where no mechanical device requires gears any
more, or where wrenches aren't necessary for basic home repairs?

------
RyanMcGreal
In the 1800s, broadcasting meant standing in the field and throwing seeds in
every direction.

We've been adapting old idioms to new uses since long before everything turned
into a computer.

~~~
tallpapab
Nice. Learned something.

------
goldmab
My TV has rabbit ears. I can watch NFL games in high definition with them for
free.

~~~
tallpapab
This. I get a couple dozen channels over the air eight of which I watch from
time to time. Still having a hard time recognizing rabbit ear icons though.
One pole on mine is broken.

------
clone1018
They do make sense, they are and have been the standard for years, and even
the new generation understands what they do, in almost every case.

------
drewmclellan
I was fascinated that Google chose the name "Google Drive" for their latest
product. Without a hint of false naivety, my initial thought on hearing the
name was that it was either:

a) Something to do with journey planning/directions, or b) Some new in-car
technology

When I saw it was neither of those, I presumed the cloud storage service had
been named in the same way razors are named, i.e. "puts you in the driving
seat" sort of thing.

It was only several hours later did it occur to me that, OMG, they mean like a
FLOPPY DISK DRIVE? Yikes.

"Drive" is not really a word I've heard used in relation to storage for years.
Mainly because we only think about the distinction between disk and drive when
the two can be parted, like a floppy disk drive. Put the disk in the drive.
Most removable media is USB-based these days, so the term isn't used.

I guess in 1990s-era Windows NT networks you'd be told to save your work to
"the M: drive" or such, but yeah, 1990s.

To me it's a moronic product name. "I'll save that to my Google Drive!" Sure
thing, you do that Grandpa.

~~~
tallpapab
Actually, there were also hard disk drives. The drive was the motor attached
to a spindle which would spin the disk whether the disk was floppy or hard.
Your point still holds that spinning media are starting to be replaced by
solid state devices. I agree that Google made a poor choice with the name. BTW
the word drive goes back further than motors. It was and still is the term to
cause sheep and draught animals to move where you wanted them to go. Still not
great for Google's product.

------
zerostar07
That's not something limited to computers or technology. Many entities are
represented with an icon of the _first_ or _first popular_ iteration of am
item. A train has smoke, lights are bulbs, authors use feather pens etc.

One could argue that it's actually faster to parse words than icons sometimes
(don't know what traffic sign planners would think about that)

------
rodh257
The reason we still use these old icons is because every single icon requires
people to think about and learn what it represents. The only icons that don't
require the user to think are ones they see all the time. If you've never seen
an icon before you can only really guess what it means, the shorter the time
it takes to guess, the better the icon is. It's for this reason that I don't
like icon-only user interfaces, they require too much thinking and guessing
from the user.

Take a look at these ones that show up when you select text in Android ICS:
[http://asset3.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/10/18/ICS_co...](http://asset3.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/10/18/ICS_copypaste.png)

What on earth do they mean? I've been using ICS since January and I still
don't know what they do except for the cut one. Because there's no way for
them to show tooltips on hovering the only way to learn is to press it and try
and work out what it just did.

~~~
klez
Well, the first one has multiple identical squares, so it seems to me
intuitive that it means 'copy'. For exclusion (and resemblance to the
folder+sheet on, e.g. MS Office) the last one has to be 'paste'.

Oh, I never used ICS, so it's not because I tried them.

------
polshaw
This is, essentially, how language itself has always worked. Common sense
labels are applied to things, and they make them things their own and outlive
the original reference.

A tin (can) is still a tin despite the fact it has nothing to do with the
element today, a light bulb has no bulb any more. The floppy=save isn't going
anywhere.

------
hoov
I'm not sure that I agree with the "Photography" examples. Even for people who
haven't seen actual Polaroid cameras, the icon is clearly some sort of camera.
The author finishes his argument with a quote from a recent pop song, which
probably means that Polaroid pictures aren't an extremely obscure reference.
Also, I bet that Instagram's early adopters know exactly what Polaroid cameras
are, and the reference isn't lost on them. I'd also be willing to bet that
there's at least some overlap with early adopters and people who are aware of
the Impossible Project. Those people would at least make the connection
between analog photography and the filters that Instagram provides.

That being said, Polaroid-inspired icons are probably not ideal for every use.

~~~
excuse-me
Even more bizarre is the road sign for speed cameras - it shows a camera that
nobody has seen for a century

[http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcToxHFPJthCpR32ukk5h...](http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcToxHFPJthCpR32ukk5h9juENVVeXOmzTUfsI7a473Sp9PBLH7q)

~~~
rwmj
If they've never watched a period film or TV program ...

~~~
excuse-me
Yes that's why I have a papyrus plant as the icon for my word processor

------
ars
So that's where radio buttons comes from!

And yes my TV has rabbit ears, only they are the wifi antennas on my router :)

~~~
Osiris
I also did not know the origin of the term radio buttons, though I DO recall
that our old cars as a kid did have those type of buttons on them.

~~~
WalterBright
I looked into replacing the old AM radio in my ancient dodge with a modern
one, but eventually decided I simply liked the look & feel of that pushbutton
thingie, and anything more modern just looked wrong in that car.

------
Fuzzwah
Reminds me of a Bucky Fuller rant about the "incorrect" words we still use
every day even though we know more now than when they came into use.

His best example is "world wide", which he put forward should really be "world
around" since we all now know that the earth is a globe and not flat.

~~~
tallpapab
Wow! This really should be known more widely.

------
harisenbon
Great premise, no so great execution. Other that the floppy icon, which I do
agree with, the others are either not icons (radio buttons are just circles --
radio buttons just happen to be what they're called) or show use items that
are still in very common usage.

------
jacobr
The clone action in VirtualBox is represented by a sheep
(<http://twitpic.com/767oui>). Took me a while to connect it with Dolly the
sheep, but now it's both distinct and funny.

------
ggchappell
Interesting. I'm 46. I've used reel-to-reel tapes because they were the normal
thing to use at the time. But it has never once occurred to me that the
voicemail icon represents a reel-to-reel tape.

Now I'm trying to figure out if I'm stupid or not.

~~~
flomo
That recording tape symbol was also used on VCRs and stereo equipment, so it
was already an "old person icon" long before it evolved into the standard
phone icon for voicemail.

------
DavidSJ
Icons are visual words, and like words, they have a history (etymology) which
is often long forgotten. But even with their history lost, they become
familiar as identifiers of a concept, and so we keep them for that reason.

------
Mz
Makes me wonder how old the author is.

Reminds me of an anecdote I read about an elementary school that had a rotary
phone for the kids to use well after digital phones were the norm. The kids
had to be taught how to use it. One child ultimately concluded it was not too
different from a digital phone though it was real slow.

Reminds me of my standard flippant remark to my sons when they were growing
up: "When I was a child and had a pet dinosaur and rotary phone." To my young
sons, both dinosaurs and rotary phones were "prehistoric" -- I.e. existed
before their time. For me, only dinosaurs were actually prehistoric.

~~~
shanselman
I'm 39. The post was written in brief lunchtime fit of get of my lawn. :)

~~~
Mz
I will be 47 in June ...and I have a condition with a life expectancy in the
thirties. In human years, that makes me the equivalent of about an 85 year
old. So get off my lawn already, you young whippersnapper!!

(More sinecerely: Thanks for responding.)

------
radley
The irony is that there's a concurrent and opposite reaction to the non-
traditional new icons used on Github.

The simple reason the save icon still looks like a floppy disk is because
everyone expects it to look like that.

------
damian2000
I believe this post to be the definitive authority on the subject of dead
icons ... ;-)

[http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/3117/save-icon-is-
the-...](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/3117/save-icon-is-the-floppy-
disk-icon-dead)

seriously - there's some good points made here, including:

"The floppy disk icon is an idiom, not a metaphor. It doesn't matter that
we're no longer writing files on 1.44MB 3.5" disks. It doesn't matter that
many users don't even know what a floppy disk is. What matters is that users
associate the icon with saving." -- Patrick McElhaney

------
nsns
That's exactly the way culture gets built, there are always traces left from
past generations - not only in icons, more so in the software and technology
they assist. These traces, sources forgotten, slowly turn into obscure quotes,
then become alive with their own new meaning, and act as channels for the
transfer of knowledge from one generation to another.

And a little OT remark about the so called "dead tree format" - it helps hide
the fact that e-books might actually be more harmful to the planet than "dead
tree" ones (think carbon imprint).

------
jack-r-abbit
I use an SD card (one way or another) almost daily. It would only take a small
amount of reworking to make the "floppy disk" Save icon look like an SD card
and still look enough like the original icon to not confuse people. The cloud
is cool and all but many devices (even cloud enabled ones) make use of some
sort of physical storage. Many devices do not have the capability (or even the
need) to get data straight from the cloud (or at least can't if they aren't
able to connect to cell/wifi).

~~~
duaneb
> It would only take a small amount of reworking to make the "floppy disk"
> Save icon look like an SD card and still look enough like the original icon
> to not confuse people.

What would be the point, though? Surely the floppy disk icon has more meaning
now as "save" than as the original metaphor of "save to floppy disk." Besides,
SD cards are outdated now - I think the only thing of mine which uses it is my
camera, and I never actually remove the card. I would guess that more people
would recognize the floppy disk than the sd card.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
no point. just offering a suggestion.

------
epaga
I thought Hanselman's tweet made the point far better than the entire article
because the article very quickly became quite the stretch trying to find
examples: overlooking the fact that many, many people are still using dead-
tree calendars, folders, and clipboards. As well as binoculars and magnifying
glasses.

The really interesting point - that there are more and more icons that truly
are becoming "icons" in a more metaphorical sense of the word - was already
made quite poignantly by the tweet.

------
gmisra
This article would have been interesting if included actual suggestions for
replacement icons.

Being anachronistic isn't inherently a flaw. However, if our attachment to
anachronism is preventing us from using more intuitive icons, then our bias
toward anachronism is something we should examine critically.

So, the real question is: are there more intuitive visual representations
available for common computer actions? What does an e-mail address book look
like?

------
TorbjornLunde
Icons don’t have to make sense if people can learn them. I think people are
being way to hung up on things being too skeuomorphic.

Remember that A didn’t start as an A, it started as a sign for ox. That’s
right, our writing system had skeuomorphic origins.

Someone growing up today might not know what a handset it, but I’m pretty sure
they recognize the handset icon. This is true for a lot of stuff in our
culture (think of non-textual road signs).

------
martincmartin
It's not just icons. Phrases are the same.

I'll bet many people here have never heard a broken record, but still have
heard the phrase "sounds like a broken record."

~~~
wunderland
I think the phrase "broken record" is used more when referring to someone
repeating themselves over and over again.

~~~
epo
What do they call it if it is a sportsperson repeatedly regaling stories of
their "fastest of all time athletic performance".

------
the_mat
He missed the point of the Instagram logo. The whole purpose of Instagram is
to make retro-styled photos, so a retro camera icon makes total sense.

------
jes5199
wow, I never knew that "radio button" meant that - I sort of imagined that
they were checkboxes that had walkie talkies with eachother?

------
lr
One which is not on here, and is my favorite, is the icon to start a
PowerPoint presentation: portable projector screen. Sure, they still exist,
but most people these days have never had to actually carry and/or set one up.
Well, maybe I take that back... If you are using PowerPoint, perhaps you are
old enough to remember using one... :-)

------
debacle
Google is a good example of what happens when you modernize icons - no one
knows what the hell is going on.

The old icons are fine.

------
TekNoir
It doesn't matter what the icons look like as long as they are different
enough from each other to be recognizable.

Someone who hasn't used a computer before isn't going to know that a floppy
disk icon means save, even if they have seen a one before and know what it is
used for. For all they know it's means open a file.

------
WalterBright
I always wondered what was wrong with English. You know, using 'print' instead
of a 'what-does-that-box-of-kleenex-mean' icon?

And for non-English speakers, is it really harder to learn what 'print' means
than consulting a cheat sheet for what the icons mean?

~~~
DavidAbrams
Are you saying you don't recognize a printer when you see it?

~~~
WalterBright
Printers come in all sorts of shapes, and I've seen quite a few different
printer icons. The first one I saw looked like a box of kleenex, and did so to
several of my coworkers at the time.

For most of the gui programs I use, I have to hover the mouse over the icon
till the tooltip comes up so I know what it does.

------
npsimons
Oh man, not another one of these "durr, icons are based on technologies that
don't apply anymore!" articles. Tell you what, you invent "better" more
"modern" icons that everyone can recognize and then maybe I'll be willing to
read your blogarrhea.

------
radley
Why do I have to still log-in to Facebook? Why can't I run Windows games on my
iPad? Why can't I just talk to my computer like Star Trek?

Programmers know why, but users don't. Same goes for icons: designers know
what they're doing & why...

~~~
DavidAbrams
The question is why Facebook forces you to use an E-mail address as a user ID.
Now THAT's amateur hour.

~~~
cdcarter
You can log in with your URL.

~~~
DavidAbrams
Assuming you've defined one, and a URL is not an appropriate user ID either.

------
fforw
Actually, my TV _has_ rabbit ears again -- only they're for DVB-T now.

------
liamgriffiths
This gave me something to think about.

When icons fail to be understood, they can fail hard. I spent a lot of time
frustrated with the new gmail design until I changed the icons to text.

~~~
DavidAbrams
Even then, the Gmail UI sucks badly:

[http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6034/6310566055_4a5f5d4a53_b.j...](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6034/6310566055_4a5f5d4a53_b.jpg)

------
nathanbarry
The floppy disk icon has always frustrated me. Though I still haven't seen a
great replacement. Would love to see this list with more thoughtful options to
use instead.

~~~
blake8086
It's because "saving" is an activity that exists only to appease computer
architecture choices. It's not a natural thing to do at all.

A more humanistic approach would be to save versioned history of everything
you do and then "save" by marking points in time as versions you would like to
share with other people or systems.

------
Mordor
Conversely, how about redesigning them for something older...

------
StavrosK
I love how there's a spool of camera film in the photo for the "voice mail"
icon. Sounds like someone's too young for those flat cameras!

~~~
caf
That would be to illustrate the phrase _"but it always looks like a container
of 110 Film."_.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, I missed that, thanks.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Envelopes are a very common item for anyone who runs a business. The vast
majority of correspondence with Uncle Sam is done via USPS.

------
alaskamiller
I wonder if the Egyptians had the same problem.

------
qntm
Not that the floppy disk being used as a Save icon was actually floppy, of
course.

~~~
epo
They had flexible cardboard cases once and were 8 inches across, so they were
floppy originally as opposed to removable disc packs which had rigid platters.
They were still called floppy discs when they stared appearing in smaller
rigid plastic cases because the old ones were still commonplace and it
reminded people they were the same thing.

------
blt
That pointy gear icon on iOS drives me crazy. Gear teeth don't look like that!

------
philipdlang
Really interesting, but a correction should be noted: CC is for courtesy copy,
not carbon copy

~~~
epo
Citation required, my understanding is that CC predates emails and would
designate those to whom carbon copies were to be sent.

~~~
brlewis
It definitely predates emails. I'm 44 and I've always heard "carbon copy",
never "courtesy copy".

<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cc>
<http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/carbon-copy.html>

------
excuse-me
In my app I just have the same little image of a CPU for everything - much
more logical

------
DavidAbrams
This headline illustrates the importance of the hyphen.

The headline refers to "people icons" that are old. I went to see how many
people icons there could even be. Turns out that what he really means is old-
people icons.

------
SaigonKick
Is this from the future? We still save to disks... sure the media has changed,
but we're doing the same task.

After reviewing the author, filed under: Comedy!

~~~
rbanffy
Well... Some people have been saving stuff to flash memory (even calling them
SDD's is an anachronism)

