
Could we kill the icon? - vxNsr
http://joecritchley.svbtle.com/kill-the-icon
======
carsongross
This is a great example of how 2D UX design is going completely off the rails.

FlatUI is making it impossible to distinguish between buttons, tags, labels
and tabs. Skeuomorphism, correctly derided in its cartoonish, Mac Calendar
form, has come to mean having _any_ depth in a UI. Sane-looking buttons?
Skeuomorphic! Using an inset for an aside? Skeuomorphic! Icons? Skeuomorphic!
Mouse pointer? Skeuomorphic!

It reminds me of the way the the Bauhaus guys would yell "Bourgeois!" at one
another's designs until all they were left with were unlivable, white cubes:

[http://www.tomwolfe.com/BauhausExcerpt.html](http://www.tomwolfe.com/BauhausExcerpt.html)

~~~
Fice
In my understanding, buttons and tabs are skeuomorphs, no matter if they are
rendered flat or pseudo-3D. In a true digital UI (e. g. CLI shell) there are
no such things. I am not trying to say that we should get rid of buttons
everywhere, my point is that making UI flat is not enough to make it non-
skeuomorphic: it may be flat but still based on imitating real-world objects
(now doing it badly).

~~~
Gormo
What's a "true" digital UI?

If you're going to say buttons and tabs are skeuomorphic, what _isn 't_
skeuomorphic? Interacting with a CLI resembles the back-and-forth query and
response of conversational dialogue: it's skeuomorphic too!

Here's a question for you: what, exactly, is _wrong_ with using metaphors for
existing, well-known analogues to convey information in a new context? Isn't
this how languages, notational conventions, and symbolic connotations
naturally evolve among humans? I understand why people are tired of Apple's
_excess_ , but what's the problem with skeuomorphism _per se_?

~~~
Fice
Have I said anywhere that using metaphors is wrong? What is wrong is when a UI
uses the button metaphor but avoids making buttons look like ones just to seem
more "digital".

------
DrJokepu
Meh. The very letters he is using to communicate his ideas are descendants of
icons. The capital A is derived from Aleph, the ancient Semitic symbol of an
ox. It used to look like the head of an ox, sort of. In fact, "A" still kind
of looks like an upside down ox head, with the horns and everything. It does
no longer mean an ox, it means letter A. Because the that’s the first sound in
the word "Aleph". Similarly these icons have evolved to have abstract meanings
beyond their original ones.

------
julespitt
Once a symbol has a meaning, it works, and continues to work as long as people
know its meaning. This article is akin to complaining that the letters of the
alphabet or the spelling of words don't represent their sound or meaning well.
True, but what is there to do about it?

There is no need to cleanse the world of symbols away because the metaphor no
longer holds.

And no, young people have absolutely no problem figuring out what the symbols
are for - they just don't know why. Oh well.

~~~
greenyoda
Exactly; having symbols that are stable and which everyone understands is very
helpful. Everybody knows that the "floppy disk" icon means "save". What would
we replace it with? An image of one of the many common shapes of an SD card?
And what if next year a different form of storage becomes common? Do we change
all the UIs?

Not to mention that it's nice to have UIs that carry over from one device to
another, so that you don't have to switch to a whole new set of symbols when
you go from your laptop to your phone.

~~~
vdaniuk
Everybody who has experience with a computer that is. There are many more
people on Earth that were not exposed to the current paradigms of UI and they
would benefit from sane symbols.

~~~
Gormo
Also, they should be spared the burden of having to learn existing natural
languages, with all of their multiple strata of evolutionary development.
Instead, new spoken languages should be devised from scratch every generation
or two, to prevent people from being contaminated by exposure to historical
context.

------
krapp
Abandoning a perfectly valid, simple graphical language and replacing
everything with gestures and three-dimensional interfaces is not a step
forward in my opinion. Don't think of it as a "floppy disk" icon, think of it
as what it is - a word in another language, one which happens to translate to
"save" in English.

You might as well get rid of the letters on keyboards because umpteen thousand
years ago they were pictographs for objects or concepts which are no longer
relevant to modern young people.

------
dennis_vartan
What about thinking of icons as visual anchors -- something to quickly "catch"
your eye as you're looking for an operation? What if it doesn't matter what
picture the icon has, as long as the shape is clearly recognizable?

Important to distinguish two types of users here:

(a) Someone unfamiliar with a UI will need more visual cues, textual hints,
and so on. "What does this button/icon do?" Without helpful text, they may be
stuck.

(b) But, someone who has used a particular piece of UI hundreds of times will
simply zero in on an app by its icon's shape/color/position. In this case,
it's much better to have many varying icons rather than pretty but similar-
looking circles. And in this case, it doesn't actually matter what the icons
portray.

The iOS 7 Safari icon, while unsightly, catches my eye every darn time. Is
that its purpose? And, again, in iOS 7, is this why the gradients follow
opposite directions?

Would love if anyone could point to more "science" in this, as I'm simply
speaking from my observations.

~~~
hayksaakian
I was about to say the same thing with the same background (none)

If I need to open Gmail, I'm not just looking for the word "Gmail" in a list,
I'm using a much more complex search algorithm.

I'm looking for:

\- the distinctive red/gray lines

\- a rectangle

\- the word "gmail"

\- words that start with f, or start with h

\- a specific region of my screen, that I remember last housing this icon

------
wvenable
Betteridge's law of headlines continues here, the answer is no. You can't kill
the icon. Or at least this article makes no mention of any alternative or
possibility of how that might be done.

------
bcoates
In 30+ years on this planet, I have never lived in anything that resembles the
shotgun shack that is the "Home" icon. (To me, the canonical home is either a
ranch or a brownstone, which look nothing like that) I think the kids will be
OK with a 3.5" disk icon without caring what it represents.

------
badave
The answer is just a flat and obvious, "No".

Firstly, symbols have been around for thousands of years. Our written language
is built around them, and our everyday life is surrounded by them. These
aren't going anywhere and are a required abstraction for higher thought. These
aren't going away.

Second, logos are prettier symbols, but they are pervasive in our world. Every
single business has a logo and tries to push that logo and brand at you every
chance they get. These aren't going away.

Third, icons are logos and/or symbols. It stands to reason that if the
previous two aren't going anywhere, then icons aren't going anywhere.

Until we have telepathy, that is.

------
bryne
Could I kill that icon in cornflower blue?

This misses the point in favor of some misguided idealism, I think. It's hard
enough to cram a functional, usable interface into the space provided often
enough without worrying about throwing a hard-won language of visual metaphors
straight into the trash before you start.

~~~
gohrt
> into the trash

"skeuomorph!"

------
Kluny
Typical useless Svtle post. You outline the problem (and it's a real one), get
my attention, pique my interest, and then just stop before you add the
slightest bit of useful information. Was it too much to come up with even one
useful idea about how to solve the problem?

~~~
guynamedloren
I got to the end and thought I skipped over something accidentally. Read the
article for a second time to confirm that there is not even a hint as to how
to solve the problem...

~~~
eulerphi
There is no problem. The "problem"/argument mentioned is manufactured out of
pure bullishness toward the current stay of things.

------
DanBC
Everyone on HN can use a computer and has been using computers for years.

Obviously it doesn't matter to you what the icons are - you'll learn them and
use them.

Put yourself in the position of someone who doesn't use computers very often,
or who hasn't used this particular piece of software before. What works for
those people?

I'll agree that the article doesn't make any sense for those people either.

~~~
Gormo
> Put yourself in the position of someone who doesn't use computers very often

Actually, let's not. There's no justification for hobbling utility of
computers for those who _do_ use them in order to make them putatively more
understandable to those who do not.

Of course, your point still stands: the established conventions - common
icons, CLIs, WIMP interfaces, etc. - are the language that's evolved among
those who _do_ use computers, and attempting to replace it with something cut
from whole cloth makes computing less accessible to _everyone_.

------
adammil
Icon consistency is far more important than flat/skewmorphic artistic
concerns. For example, my kid has never seen a 3.5" disk, but knows the icon
means "Save", probably because it is consistent among the UIs he uses. Even if
you find the best icon metaphor for Settings, changing the gear icon to
something else will cause pain for lots of people mainly because it is new,
more than any other artistic consideration.

------
Rumudiez
These are the kinds of thoughts I could only expect from someone who only
encounters bad semiotic practice. Rather than "killing the icon," he should be
focused on educating people about the main categorizations of signs and
enforcing icon designers to make good use of indexical and iconic signs,
rather than coming up with unrelated symbols that users have to learn through
trial and error or type-based assistance.

------
gbl08ma
Regarding the floppy disk icon, the post says:

"That’s holding onto the past; and providing a lack of recognition for young
people, who will literally have no idea what one is."

I don't see what's the problem with "holding onto the past": everyone knows
there was a past, that the world didn't start when they were born. One way or
another, we get to know about things that existed (and disappeared) before we
were born, and we accept it as something natural.

Going by the line of thought the author suggests, we may as well, for example,
ditch files and folders - not just the icons, but the complete organizational
concept. I guess we could just use "libraries" and "galleries", but look at
where those are going... in some years, using these concepts could as well
mean "holding onto the past".

"Imagine a native digital medium"

In my humble opinion, "digital" and "native" don't combine very well.
"Digital" is far from being something every human is familiar with, at birth
(so that it can be considered "native"). Killing the icon is actually going to
have a negative effect on the creation of a "native digital medium", because
icons are many times representations of real life, even if poor
representations. For the medium to be native, it would need to actually be
closer to what we see in real life, than to be even more abstract.

And let's not forget the fact that after knowing their meaning (regardless of
them having any meaning in the physical environment around us), icons are an
easy and quick way of recognizing certain functionality even on never-before-
seen UI screens, which gives a better first time experience of any software.

------
Zoepfli
I have a hunch icons and text are recognized by a different part of the brain,
and the best way is to use them together, e.g. have an icon plus some text
right next to it.

Some people are image oriented, and can go by the icons. Some people are text
oriented and can just read the text.

The text helps first timers who might not yet be aware of certain icon
conventions. The icons help power users because icons with clear silhouettes
can be read very fast.

And yet another group of people read the text and look at the icon every time
- even during repeated use. Because there are several parts of the brain that
recognize a command, they feel more assured that what they are about to click
is the right thing, and therefore feel more comfortable with the GUI.

All of this is nothing new, really. It goes back to the very first GUIs. There
is 30 years of experience with this, there are probably lots of studies that
this is indeed a good way to go.

So no, we should not kill the icon.

~~~
Gormo
> I have a hunch icons and text are recognized by a different part of the
> brain

It doesn't "feel" like that to me, as far as my own metaperception goes. At
least not at a purely semantic level: I see a word, and I associate it with a
concept; I see an icon, and I associate it with a concept. There's rarely any
syntactic relationship among icons as there is among words, so icons are
equivalent to merely seeing an single word in isolation, labelling something.

------
vezzy-fnord
CLIs do a pretty formidable job of killing icons, I'd attest.

~~~
dragonwriter
> CLIs do a pretty formidable job of killing icons, I'd attest.

CLIs (and textual environments generally) _also_ use icons that have long been
divorced from the real-world things they originally represented. And in ways
which have nothing to do with their original iconic uses, anyhow.

I'm not sure how that's better than just using icons.

------
drakaal
Sure we can kill the Icon. I am building voice interfaces. Eyes Off interfaces
have no need for icons.

------
msutherl
The replacement of icons with text in iOS7 was wrong-headed and inconsistently
executed. Not to mention that it created a bunch of messes for designers to
deal with. I hope that we return to a world where icons are fashionable again
soon.

------
DDR0
What in the world are we suppose to replace it _with_, though?

------
null_ptr
Yes, please, make your interfaces as unusable as you possibly can. Get on that
trend bandwagon and never let go, let it take you far, far away.

------
itchitawa
Maybe oneday the save icon will go because applications will maintain their
state automatically and the whole concept of working on an "open" copy of a
file which is different from the "saved" one will disappear. Actually, why
hasn't that taken over a long time ago? Some applications and many web apps do
it so they don't need any save icon.

~~~
wvenable
> Actually, why hasn't that taken over a long time ago?

Ultimately because people prefer the control that it gives them. They can edit
a document and just decide they don't want to save their changes and they can
do that. Or they can save it under a different name or in a different folder.

------
indubitably
I guess the post is a rant, because the author doesn't actually say what is
supposed to replace the icon.

------
miguelrochefort
After reading the comments here, it's easy to feel like a visionary genius. I
mean, don't you guys see how obvious this is? The UI/workflow of the future is
nothing like the crap we use today. I'm quite confused by people's ignorance.
Seriously.

------
mmagin
What is all this "native" digital medium that he mentions three times in this
post?

While a lot of metaphors to old ways of doing things (office work, etc.) may
be clumsy, the "native" interface to the computer is really far too low-level
for everyday use.

~~~
krapp
That part was confusing. I suspect though it more or less refers to the crux
of whatever point he's trying to make, so maybe he needs to run it through a
couple more drafts and clarify. Sounds like voodoo to me.

He talks about having users provide their own gestural icons... which just
seems like it would be a pain to have to come up with a new kind of flourish
every time you installed an app, and I supposed speech recognition, which like
gestural commands has a place but I don't think necessarily surpasses the
utility of "the little orange and blue round thingy makes firefox happen". I
mean that's just _perfect._

------
nazgulnarsil
The problem is skeuomorphism was and is a lazy way to provide contextual cues.
It is merely one tool amongst a set of tools for providing non-explicit
information to the user.

~~~
wvenable
Lazy is good for users. But all lot of the skeuomorphism that is rallied
against is the kind that is merely decoration. There's a lot of babies being
thrown out with bathwater lately.

------
dinkumthinkum
Here's the reality. These flat stuff is a fad. Hating skein program is
essentially a snobbish sort of fad that that has been thrust upon users
whether they like or not.

------
melloclello
Icons are hieroglyphs, and there's nothing wrong with that

------
sovande
Going from theory to practice, getting rid of the wall of icons on the iOS
home screen would certainly be nice. But replacing it with what? Siri and
spotlight maybe?

------
jamesaguilar
Probably, but we wouldn't want to.

