
Gmail Icons are Hard - bloomca
https://grumpy.website/post/0Px1O7Ukl
======
Pxtl
I've said it over and over again:

I speak english, not pictogram. The only platform I've ever seen that got
icons right was Windows Phone, because it had a hard-coded "..." button that
always did the same thing:

1) Show all the labels, and

2) Show all the additional text-labeled (non-icon) actions that were hidden by
default.

So the first thing you did when faced with an unfamiliar set of icons was
touch the "..." button which showed you the full list of things you could do.

~~~
rmorey
I feel like there are a lot of really solid, user-focused features that
windows phone nailed, that now seem basically lost

~~~
exergy
Yep, like all the actions at the bottom of the screen where you could most
easily reach them, unlike iOS which places the back button (gesture
notwithstanding) at the top _left_!

One of the Windows Phone's designers had a really insightful article [1] about
how they designed windows phone fundamentally for a technology native who
doesn't need shitty metaphorical leather textures on his glass screen
calendar. It is where the famous movement against skeumorphism started (and
thank god for that!). WP was doing flat design before it was cool.

On an old MSDN post (maybe?) I remember reading that the inspiration for the
Live Tiles was a user whose central interest was to use the phone as liitle as
possible to do his task as quickly as he could before he rapidly replaced the
phone back into his pocket to get on with real life. I remember creating a new
calendar entry in WP7 took three taps from start to finish, not counting
typing out the title. There weren't many other fields to fill besides the
Title of the entry and the time/date, and it set a default reminder time of 15
minutes before start time. Perfection. Before facebook and the rest dragged
the carpet out from under them, you could get your twitter and facebook feed
within the contacts app so you could get it all in one place.

Edited to add: I'm on a bit of a love fest venting session so here's more. WP
designers recognized that OLEDs were amazing, so they made the phone White
Text on Black from the get go! Thus, great battery life. Further, all the
icons were also uniformly coloured, making the whole experience so cohesive.
All the apps also looked like all the others, so the learning curve was
nonexistent. They recognized how little juice engineers of android could suck
out of their bloated multi core processors, so they made their phones work
phenomenally well on even shitty, single core processors.

I fucking loved windows phone's early verions. It's a shame they've gone away.
But an even bigger shame that they had no confidence in their original
designers, and ended up adapting the hideous, appalling, atrocious, fucking
retarded hamburger menu before they went away.

[1] [http://kruzeniski.com/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-
inte...](http://kruzeniski.com/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-interaction)

~~~
yks
> WP was doing flat design before it was cool.

it was somewhat annoying to watch the community go religious on flat design
when "Apple invented it"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Hey, I thought Google invented flat! /s

Seriously though, Windows phones sucked for many reasons (including lack of
exposed features in the OS, especially in first versions, and of course lack
of apps in general), but UX wasn't one of them. I guess they failed in
releasing too much of an MVP, and then not following through properly. I
continue to claim that Microsoft had a great UX vision for mobile, and that
they're the only one with an OS that can turn tablets from consumption devices
into productive tools.

------
adregan
I'm a developer in his 30s and my time has finally come to be "that guy":

We've already gone through this. It's called mystery meat navigation, and it
was so prevalent and discouraged that it even has a wikipedia entry[0].
Hopefully it'll go out of fashion again.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation)

~~~
overcast
...and now we have that horrible hamburger menu.

~~~
notriddle
At least the standard "hamburger menu" opens a list of textually labeled
options. That's better than icon-only toolbars.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
And by the same argument, a traditional menu would be even better.

------
AdamTReineke
Yesterday, I learned that my sixty-year old mother uses a screen reader on her
tablet. Her vision is fine but she never knows what icons mean so the screen
reader is able to read out the describing text and decipher them for her.

~~~
notimetorelax
This is a perfect example of why accessibility features are not only for
visually impaired! Accessibility done right can bring value for a wider
audience.

~~~
dingo_bat
Only if your icons are bad. Otherwise this problem wouldn't exist.

~~~
sevensor
I think the problem is that icons are categorically bad for people who are
unable to interpret their visual language. I switched my preference to text as
soon as the icons were rolled out, and forgot about them. I resented that the
designers were imposing a new metaphorical scheme and expecting us all to
adapt to it, to suit their own needs. It's the pinnacle of arrogance.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Just curious, what do you think of emojis?

~~~
sevensor
All the ambiguity of body language with none of the advantages of context. I'm
not the first and surely not the last person to confuse crying-tears-of-mirth
with crying-tears-of-sadness. And what am I to make of an aubergine or a
bicycle?

------
zawerf
IIRC it used to be all text. I remember feeling the same thing when they
rolled out the icon only design and was frustrated that I had to relearn
something I had already been using daily (memory is fuzzy, it was many years
ago).

Now I am actually okay with it. For a product that is daily use, you get used
to the icons fairly quick and am glad it doesn't take that much screen real
estate.

What I hated is that it inspired a lot of other products that are NOT meant
for daily interaction to do the same thing. For example I probably only
interact with the dropbox desktop client once every blue moon and they have
icons that make no sense (First icon is two squares for opening Paper which I
don't use. Next icon is a globe which is for opening the web ui. All I want to
do is revert a file!).

~~~
koube
Bitbucket has recently changed to an icon theme, with genius icons such as:

1\. <>

2\. </>

3\. a one node graph

4\. a three node graph

5\. a two node digraph

6\. the refresh symbol

7\. an arrow pointing to a cloud

8\. a page

I have no idea what any of these mean and I hate it. Plus, it takes 8 seconds
to load anything so if you click on the wrong one it's extra annoying.

If anyone's curious, the answers are:

1\. <>: source

2\. </>: source, as far as I can tell it's the same button again

3\. one node graph: commits

4\. three node graph: branches

5\. two node digraph: pull requests

6\. refresh symbol: pipelines

7\. array pointing to cloud: deployments

8\. page: downloads

~~~
tazjin
This reminds me of a t-shirt I got at some Atlassian event a few years ago. It
says "You </> me" and I haven't the slightest clue what that means, but it
looks cool.

~~~
chii
it could equally have been "you end me", and the meaning very different...

~~~
bigiain
Now I want one of those, with a stylised stab wound blood trickle dripping
down from it.

I'll wear it loud and proud at the cafe that's always got Atlassian devs in it
round the block from here...

------
alexggordon
I think this article misses a couple important points when it comes to UI AND
UX.

I'd argue that an important element of UI is discoverability. Yes, a "A box
with downward arrow" is not in and of itself enlightening about what it does.
By looking at that icon I am not sure what it does. However, I can discover
what it does in very few actions. Clicking on it results in selecting all the
emails on the page, and the box changes to checked. Clicking the down icon
results in a selection menu with "All", "None", "Read", "Unread" and
"Starred"[0]. Clicking on one of those items selects only those items. Given
that interaction, can anyone here say they still don't understand what it
does? My one criticism is that selecting something like "stared" doesn't
filter down to only those items too, so you can now select things that aren't
on the page of items you're currently seeing.

Apple's original iOS did not convey a sense of "immediate understanding" that
this article demands, but rather focused on discoverability. That is the same
mentality that went into make this UI/UX. My point is you can't judge one
without the other. Removing all animations from the original iOS would have
come close to ruining it. Showing a picture of a Google UI, and criticizing it
without allowing it the benefit of discoverability is tantamount to the same
lack of context as removing those animations.

Also, following this posts advice:

> Luckily, this menu can be switched to text labels in Settings.

And changing to text button labels[1] doesn't even change that first icon[2],
so I'm not sure that post is really for any other purpose than creating
material for some echo chamber.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/D8CogSS.png](https://i.imgur.com/D8CogSS.png)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/jOaTKDs.png](https://i.imgur.com/jOaTKDs.png)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/tkhSoom.png](https://i.imgur.com/tkhSoom.png)

~~~
Jasper_
I'm afraid to click buttons in mobile apps and web pages now. At one point,
there was a standardized method, known as "Undo", to assure the user that the
changes they're making can be reverted, but at some point along the way we
ditched that concept. It's especially worse on mobile where tooltips don't
exist, and I have to just have to tap randomly on an icon that looks vaguely
like what I want, and pray that I'm doing the right thing.

If I'm lucky, there will be a limited-time Undo button after doing the action
(GMail has this on some actions but not others!), but if I hesitate too long
or accidentally click on anything but it, it goes away permanently. I'm sure
I've lost some important email to the depth of time because of a few fatfinger
mistaps.

~~~
baddox
How common was undo really? I don't remember undo functionality being anywhere
except in content editor applications like word processors, and that's still
the case today.

~~~
freeone3000
What _isn 't_ a content editor application? Word has it. Paint has it. Outlook
has it. Windows Explorer (the file manager) has it. It's universal across
Windows and Mac OSes and as universal as anything can be on linux.

~~~
baddox
> What isn't a content editor application?

Well, anything that isn't a text/content editor (or a file system manager,
which I had forgotten to mention), so basically the vast majority of computer
usage. Settings in applications, navigation state of applications, state of
the OS/window manager itself (I'm not aware of a desktop environment where
moving or closing a window or application supports an undo feature), etc. Web
browsers and most file managers do support back and forward navigation, if you
want to count that as "undo."

The comment I was initially replying to talked about being afraid to press
buttons in modern UIs because of the lack of undo. My claim is that, except
for buttons that change formatting in text/content editors or buttons that
make changes in some file system managers, undo functionality has really never
existed to my knowledge.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Web browsers (...) do support back and forward navigation, if you want to
> count that as "undo."_

Not in practice, as this feature is universally broken by modern web
developers, making it totally unreliable.

You have a good point about undo - it was universally a feature for reverting
operations _on edited data_ , not on _application state_ itself. But then
again, it was compensated by buttons having reliable tooltips, and most
options available in textual menus.

------
ibdf
There should be a Hacker News "Challenge HN:" post, where you complain (point
out) about some broken system and you challenge other
people/developers/designers to do better.

Challenge HN: Improve Gmail Icons

~~~
nafizh
For open source projects, it makes sense. Otherwise, why should HN spend its
time solving a for profit company's product flaws?

~~~
wycy
Mainly for the joy of (possibly, but perhaps unlikely) having your
artwork/improvement(s) rolled into a very public product.

------
jgtrosh
I agree with the spirit. More precisely I especially agree that static icons
cannot easily convey actions; instead they look like things which are supposed
to be associated with a purpose, symbols which are usually clumsy, or combined
shapes which rarely convey the intent immediately.

On the other hand I find the article slightly dishonest on a couple of points.
Not because I believe the icons are particularly obvious, but because the
descriptions seem to miss the point. Here goes:

> \- Ok, clock now. This is universally undestood sign that could mean
> literally _anything_. What time is it?

The clock is associated with time. In the context of received mail, it seems
quite natural that a time-related action would be setting a reminder.

> \- Right-pointing rectangle? This looks most like road sign pointing to some
> place, but actually means TAG. Huh?

To me this obviously looks like sticky notes you can add in books or on files
to categorize content, a.k.a. quite literally tags.

~~~
Androider
_To me this obviously looks like sticky notes you can add in books or on files
to categorize content, a.k.a. quite literally tags._

They're supposed to be the old-school paper tags with a hole in the narrow end
[0].

These tags, like floppy's and manila folders, will live on in our iconography
even as someone born this decade is unlikely ever encounter the real thing. I
was recently amused to explain to my kid what the dialer icon on the iPhone
is: "well, a long, long time ago (it's getting close to 20 years now since the
Nokia 3310 sold over a 100 million units and we got rid of our landline) we
used to have stationary phones in our homes and you would talk into a wired
handset that looked like this icon".

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Martha-Stewart-Crafts-Kraft-
Tags/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Martha-Stewart-Crafts-Kraft-
Tags/dp/B0052UMTP2)

~~~
dmitriid
Moreover, things like tags and manila envelopes are very Western or even
American. A lot of the world doesn't have these tags or manila envelopes.

------
cbhl
I feel sorry for the designers that had to work on the redesign that
introduced these icons in the first place.

They had to add a bunch of padding around the buttons in the toolbar based on
a top-down redesign mandate. Buttons needed to be big enough to be used with
fingers/touchscreens, with one glorious responsive UI for desktop and mobile.
They discovered that labels didn't fit inside the "safe area" for certain
languages, like German (and monitors had lower resolutions then). The icons
were a compromise.

And then desktop web stagnated under a "mobile-first" mandate from the top.
(Since then, the mandate-du-jour has changed.)

One of the great things about the newest GMail redesign is that there are
settings around this -- you can make the padding narrower and you can change
the UI to use text labels again.

------
ungzd
The problem is not that icons are not self-describing (diskette save icon does
not describe "save" operation either), but that these icons look like
indistinguishable grey circles until you start to focus attention to them.

The same applies to iOS and Android application icons, despite they have
vibrant colors. I always can't find what I need, they look the same. I end up
using search box if I want to run app that is not on home screen.

------
overcast
I have a severe distaste for icons. Look at HN, there's zero thinking involved
outside of reading a language. You know exactly what something does, and it
can easily be multilingual as a result. I'm hoping the next big trend in
design focuses on minimalist interfaces. Nothing but text, and some photos if
needed. So tired of all the fluff, particularly on small phone screens.

~~~
__jal
I don't hate icons, per se. I just find them hard to use. For whatever reason,
I have to think about icons a lot more than words, even after I'm very
familiar with them.

Watching others, most folks don't seem to have this problem - words and icons
seem about equally fluid for them. And I'm fine if they don't move - I
remember them by location. But I'm very slow to 'read' icons.

The most common situation that highlights this is tab-application-switching.
Those are never in the same order twice, and I have to stare at them until I
can pick out the icon of the app I'm thinking of. I've looked for hacks that
would replace the icons with words, but haven't seen one, at least on MacOS.

~~~
alexbecker
I absolutely have the same problem. I think other people do to, but now I'm
not sure if I've observed this or I'm just assuming other people have the same
problems as me.

------
emgee_1
So you read HN. Hacker news. You set up iSync (mbsync) and all Your Gmail via
IMAP. Since you are a hacker, you use emacs (or if you are less fortunate :-)
vim) Now configure mu4e, notmuch or gnus. All Your actions are now a simple
keystroke away: C compose R reply F forward And never bother with Gmail
interface :-)

~~~
Pxtl
There's delicious irony in how many jargon-y terms are in here that would be,
to non-geeks, just as opaque as those icons.

\- HN

\- mbsync

\- IMAP

\- emacs/vim

\- mu4e/notmuch/gnus

~~~
emgee_1
Yes you are right. However, this is not the New York times nor the economist
nor the guardian. This IS hacker news. :-)

------
manigandham
First thing I do is switch to text labels. Icons are proven to be harder to
recognize.

Images are great for conveying complex information but icons are much smaller
and harder to recognize, especially in gmails soft bubbly grayscale icons that
refuse to use any colors or even borders.

------
scotchio
Maybe I'm crazy, but I think those icons do a pretty good job...

~~~
ghayes
I think the idea is that you know what they do from having learned and
interacted with the icons. If you're a fresh user, it could be a pretty
unintuitive learning curve.

~~~
nailer
I've been using gmail since you needed to have an invite. I just learnt that:

> Two envelopes in a stack means 'mark as read'

from this article. I had no idea what it did before.

------
Isamu
Under Settings -> General

select Button Labels: Text

Life is too short.

~~~
realworldview
Unambiguous, non-disruptive and not distracting. Life is to short to live by
the whim of profit-led iconography which aims to keep people guessing and
attentive whilst distracting them from the real utility and product necessity.

------
alejohausner
If you want to say something and be understood, use words in a commonly-used
language: English. Using icons is, effectively inventing new words. Nobody has
seen those words before: they are the designer's private language.

~~~
gowld
That's a provincial point of view. Despite Anglo hegemony, billions of people
prefer non-English.

Anyway, English invents new words or new meanings all the time. What does a
"cloud" have to do with webservers?

~~~
cabaalis
> What does a "cloud" have to do with webservers?

I've always assumed it had to do with the common use of a cloud to refer to
the internet or other network on diagrams. With a cloud being used because it
conveyed a sense of "the unknown" or "uncontrollable." Which is an interesting
meaning progression to the current version of "cloud."

~~~
gowld
> common use of a cloud to refer to the internet or other network on diagrams.

You know that because you are a network software developer. In summary,
though, "Cloud icon represents the cloud, and we use the word "cloud" because
... we use a cloud icon to represent it."

------
roywiggins
I had no idea the icons could be changed to text in Settings. I know what they
all do, but there's something about them that bugs me a lot. There's always a
slight hesitation where I think about what they mean.

------
albertgoeswoof
I like to imagine that the people that get annoyed with poor iconography are
the same people that use Vim and other esoteric software.

Instead of commenting on google's design, we could be commenting on software
that isn't proprietary, closed source and anti-consumer, with access provided
for free solely to enable data mining and maximise ad revenue.

~~~
cpburns2009
I hate poor iconography.

A while ago it took me a good 15 minutes to figure out how to mark an email as
"unread" in the Gmail Android client. Apparently an envelope icon means "mark
as unread".

The newish (within the past couple years) navigation icons on Android are
great: a left pointing triangle, a circle, and a square. At least the triangle
points the same direction as old back button.

Disclaimer: I do use Vim when SSHed into a server because that's the CLI
editor I happened to learn and it supports regex search.

~~~
MereInterest
Also, the "Mark as unread" button is only present if you are in your inbox
with the email selected. There is nothing analogous to the desktop's "Mark as
unread" which is at the top of an open email, and returns you to the inbox
when used. Also, there is no indication that the emails are selectable at all.
The icon to the left of each email is a portrait of the sender, which in no
way corresponds to the action of selecting an email.

------
vortico
I've been using basic HTML Gmail since the new one came out.
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en)
Works great with vim-like browsers and has no icons, just text.

------
_sdegutis
I have a hard time designing the UI on
[https://editfight.com](https://editfight.com) because it’s supposed to be
easy and simple and obvious on both desktop and mobile, but there’s almost no
space on mobile. So I resorted to icons at first and then moved half the icons
to a pop out menu and turned them back into words. The only icons left are
ones that are either obvious or easily learnable and memorizable. And I had to
change a few and even draw a few myself (SVG) because they were too similar to
each other. There’s still one I’m not super happy with but it’s a very strange
feature that only makes sense when you finally need it. Icon design and UI
design in general is very hard to get 100% right for everyone.

~~~
nneonneo
Odd, for a site calling itself “editfight” you sure are quick to ban people.
Maybe you need some kind of interstitial or landing page if you want to
explain what your idea is (it’s clearly not just for people to randomly
doodle).

~~~
_sdegutis
The name editfight.com is kind of a historic name and every time I've
suggested changing it, all the regulars incite in an uprising and demand I
leave it alone. Sorry for the confusion though. I just updated the site to
shows the rules and a brief explanation of what it is when visiting it for the
first time. Thanks for your feedback :)

------
vitaflo
Reminds me a bit of this toolbar in Google Sheets. The last option is not
underline (it's text color). Always trips me up.

[https://imgur.com/a/7w1NwvO](https://imgur.com/a/7w1NwvO)

------
jokoon
Oh yeah!

I remember I was looking for a "mark as unread" in the android gmail app,
never finding it for a long time until I tried that icon, wondering what it
was. It was the mail icon button.

~~~
LoSboccacc
can we also spend a second complaining how the mark as read is not contextual
in the web version of gmail? I hate that.

------
ken
It's not advertised, but Gmail still supports a "basic HTML" mode, which uses
real text and real buttons/menus/links for everything. I think it's nicer than
the new all-gray, all-icon, all-JS version (except for a couple annoying bugs
which will probably never get fixed).

They've removed any way to enable it from Gmail itself. You have to search
Gmail Help ("See Gmail in standard or basic HTML version"), which has a magic
link you can visit to enable it.

~~~
reaperducer
Also, if you have a crap connection, Google will try to detect your speed and
sometimes offer to switch you to the basic mode.

------
gnode
In the past hover text helped to fill in the knowledge gaps when met with
unfamiliar or ambiguous icons. On mobile and other touch devices, where there
is no mouse, this breaks down. We could do with some kind of replacement for
hover text on touch UIs, maybe a return of the "What's this?" question mark
button Windows used to have.

~~~
gowld
In a well-built mobile app, long-press is "Hover"

~~~
cpburns2009
This is why "discoverability" sucks. I've used Android for 9 years, and I'm
aware of long-pressing but I didn't know it was a substitute for mouse-
hovering. Is this standard? I thought it was a substitute for right click.

~~~
gowld
You're right that you can't differentiate "Hover" from "context-click" on
mobile. But there's not _need_ to have two separate actions for "show info
tooltip" and "context menu", since they don't interfere.

Poking at something to see what it does is something most people do since
toddlerhood. The only challenge is getting over your fear that irreversible
operations are triggered on touchdown not touchup.

------
sgustard
What's the implication of this article?

Is it that Google did not do user testing?

Or they did user testing and found the icons work fine?

Or they know labels work better, but intentionally chose to use icons anyway?

"I don't like X and it's obvious that Y would be better" is a fun topic, but
I'm not so sure why people are so quick to accept an anecdote as gospel.

------
sjs382
Wow, I have the opposite experience, but I'm pretty accustomed to GMail and
it's icons.

Up until this moment I'd been annoyed that my action bar in GMail was text-
only after the update to the new interface. I was even wondering why the
author was writing about the _old_ GMail and went searching through the
comments looking for others who were just as confused and checking GMail
settings (it was there—I just missed it).

The icons are much easier (for me) to decipher _upon quick glance_ , once I
know their meanings. The text requires me to actually read the buttons before
clicking, which is slower if I'm not doing it repetitively (like
tagging/archiving a weeks worth of emails on a Friday).

That said, I'll _always_ prefer a combination of icons and labels.

------
maaaats
At least in the browser I can hover and see some help text. On mobile it's a
shot in the dark.

------
askvictor
To everyone wanting text buttons, consider that a surprisingly large amount of
the population has literacy problems (perhaps an email client isn't the best
example for this, since you're using it to read and write words, but consider
the general case). Icons are going to make their life easier (assuming there
isn't room for icons+text all the time). This is an counter-point/trade-off to
vision-impaired accessibility where you need words everywhere.

Icons are hard (to get right) in general. Do you stick with skeuomorphisms
when half your user base know them well, but the other half have no idea what
they mean (e.g. floppy disk to save)?

~~~
bo1024
But if literate people don't get what the icons mean, why would less-literate
people?

~~~
askvictor
Maybe some people are more wordy, and some more visual? You'd be surprised at
how people adapt to not being able to read - there is literature of children
who 'fake' reading - they essentially memorise the shape of a thousand or so
words (over the course of their school) so it appears they can read to some
degree, but have no idea when they come across a word they haven't memorised.

------
booleandilemma
Seems to me like this person is making a mountain out of a molehill. The
functionality of the icons can be learned quickly and they look aesthetically
better than text.

You can’t make an icon that is naturally unambiguous to everyone, everywhere.

------
brazzy
The only intuitive user interface is the nipple, everything else is learned.

------
pkamb
The icon that gets me is the "paperclip" for Attach vs. the "chain link" icon
for Hyperlink.

Two icons in the toolbar, both small rounded metal loops. I have to hover for
the tooltip every time.

------
cheapsteak
People often make the mistake of thinking text and icons are two ways of doing
the same thing

Labels are good at telling you what things are, but finding specific
frequently performed actions in a list of text that all look similar will
yield frustration

Icons (and especially icons with colour, or icons plus colour) are good at
allowing you to quickly find something you're already looking for, but
expecting icons to perform the job of labels to provide initial information
will yield confusion

------
testplzignore
> This means move, but even since Windows 95 days it was clear nobody is going
> to come up with a good metaphor for move. Nobody did.

Why not a cow? Everyone knows cows go mooooooo-ve :)

~~~
dingaling
_Comment est-ce que je peux déplacer cet e-mail ci? Il faut appuyer la vâche?
Pourquoi?_

I realise you were only joking but it does illustrate why i8n icons are
difficult.

------
edejong
Most of these icons would be much clearer if a dabble of colour and depth was
added. All these flat design aficionados have only aesthetics in mind, not
usability.

------
pishpash
Three stripes or three downward arrows are the dumbest invention. Three
horizontal dots already existed, and literally means ellipsis from other
contexts.

------
ape4
Actions that have arrow-like things in mail: forwarding, replying, moving mail
to a mailbox. We need better ways of saying these things.

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kup0
Once I learned that I could switch to text labels in Gmail, I can never go
back. Even though I've learned the icons, I am still more productive with text
labels instead.

Even knowing the icons' meanings, my brain has to pause a second to think
about what they do.

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_eric
This website reminded of littlebigdetails[0] when it comes to analysing user
interfaces. The difference is that the latter points out what's good about
them.

[0] [http://littlebigdetails.com/](http://littlebigdetails.com/)

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bdcravens
I've noticed an increasing trend of designs that constrain themselves to the
FontAwesome set, and it's not uncommon that the same icon on different sites
triggers entirely different actions.

~~~
jvagner
Yes, this. I don't mind it for cosmetic purposes, but it's getting used for
interfaces in confounding ways.

I hit a personal wall of "will & interest" this weekend trying to re-learn an
app I've used for a long time that updated with some interface changes.

I think it's actually possible to reach a "too many interfaces" limit.

Or at least I'm getting there.

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V-2
Gmail isn't the only service guilty of that.

Here's an icon from the Outlook web mail app:
[https://ibb.co/ic66Qd](https://ibb.co/ic66Qd)

What does it mean?

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jonathankoren
I always hit Gmail’s in app “back” button when I want to reply.

I honestly had to ask someone how to reply to an email in gmail.

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math0ne
I think in most applications this is important but in my email, I value
density above all else.

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craftyguy
I don't have this problem in mutt

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jmkim
REALLY HARD

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neivin
Design for the sake of design...

Companies spend too much on designers.

~~~
whoisjuan
They spend too little. The problems that real design solves have nothing to do
with this. Anyone can just pick icons from a library and make them buttons.
How easy is to blame a designer for these choices.

People who say "design for the sake of design" are exactly the people who need
design.

For starters, everything is designed. Show me one human-produced thing that
wasn't actually consciously designed by someone. Is that design for the sake
of design? There's a difference between good design and bad design. It's
important to learn how to tell the difference, but more important to learn how
critical to success is good design (regardless if it comes from a trained
designer or not.)

~~~
ksk
Sure, who could argue that bad is better than good? :)

The question is - But, Why. I'd bet half a paycheck that the only people who
really really care about the new "cool" designs are (1) Bosses looking to take
credit (2) Bored tech writers looking for content (3) UX Peers looking for
validation (4) Tech people looking for new toys. Normal folks just want all
that fancy UI stuff to go away. They would be just as productive on a UI based
on Mac OS 8.

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golfer
Why does the bottom of the page say "All fights retarded" ?

wtf?? Totally unnecessary.

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angrydev
All of these icons have tooltips that appear within 100ms of hovering over
them. Surely there is a better part of the new gmail UI to pick apart?

~~~
nightski
Isn't that kind of a poor choice then if the intent is to have the user hover
over the icon? Also what about touch?

If there was a functional advantage of the icons that would be great. But I'm
guessing it was chosen just to "look prettier".

~~~
JoshuaEN
Icons take up less space on the screen, which is useful if you are using a
smaller browser window (or a phone screen).

~~~
thedaemon
But the trend, and the default GMail settings for UI spacing is far too spaced
out. I'm finding it difficult to use some of the newer UI's with such wide
spacing, without using the app fullscreen. Microsoft CRM, I'm looking at you.
It's 100% not usable unless it's full screen.

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falcon620
Their product managers and designers spent too much of their "clutter budget"
on stupid stuff so they felt they had to reduce the clutter by making those
things that should have been icon+text buttons into icon-only buttons.

