

In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface - vectorbunny
http://boxesandarrows.com/icon-survey-results/

======
asperous
What I've always found fascinating was that how much easier I've always found
words to find and use than images.

You'd think little pictograms would be quicker but whenever an interface
focuses on using lots of little icons I find it a mental workout to find which
one I'm looking for.

For example, many people dislike the new gmail layout, but the biggest ux
stumble I have is clicking the attach pictogram instead of the the link one. I
thought it was interesting that in the results in the article 21% of people
reported the reverse, they associated attach with the link pictogram.

In RL companies use pictograms because you don't have to localize, but the
internet is dynamic and the tooltips are already localized, why not just use
words?

~~~
csense
> why not just use words

You may run out of room in the interface if the word is substantially longer
in some language.

This is a particular problem if the original work is in a language like
Japanese, which has short words compared to, say, English. (Japanese Kanji [1]
has thousands of characters available, compared to the measly twenty-six of
the English alphabet, so it's not surprising that Japanese words are shorter
on average.)

Many HN readers are probably familiar with the example of video games that are
English localizations of Japanese originals. Sometimes the UI or art simply
doesn't have room to accomodate the longer English equivalents. (Particularly
in earlier decades when localization wasn't as high a priority as it is
today.)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji)

~~~
jjs
Your mention of Kanji is particularly salient, as the blog post catches these
skeuomorphic icons in the act of evolving from pictograms to ideograms...

~~~
csense
Good point. In 100 years maybe physical floppy disks will be long-forgotten by
everyone but museums and historians, but the icon will still be in everyday
use.

And maybe the icon will change over time. As the public's consciousness of
physical floppies dies away, maybe designers will feel freer to use a more
stylized representation, like the Voicemail icon's representation of
a...telephone handset? Cassette tape?

~~~
epylar
It's the tape inside a cassette. Like the old answering machines.

------
jaysonelliot
Icons are mnemonics, not signposts.

Icons alone are never sufficient when someone encounters an interface for the
first time, you should always include a text label.

New users to an interface will read the text labels, and after time, the icons
become a quick mnemonic for them to locate functions they've accessed before.

Even more important than visuals or text is location. Our spatial memory has a
higher priority than either. In repeated user tests, I've observed that once
people become used to a button resting in, say, the top left corner of a UI,
they will click there again for the same function, even if the button itself
has changed.

Don't worry too much about the exact semiotics of your icons. Just keep them
reasonably meaningful, clearly distinct from one another, include text labels,
and be consistent with where you put them.

~~~
Mithaldu
This is really the most important point. When i use a new app i do not look at
the icons and try to figure out what the images mean. What i DO is look for
icons that are in similar places, or look like icons i'm used to in other
applications. When i can't immediately find what i'm looking for, i use
tooltips to search further and once found will easily remember which little
picture does what i wanted, or at least roughly where the little picture was.

What the picture shows does not matter, only that i can remember it.

------
boneheadmed
I'm always a bit frustrated that Google Docs doesn't have a save icon. It
simply says "All changes saved in drive". But you see this doesn't stop my
habitual compulsion to press the save icon (or at least do :w in Vim).

~~~
stephengillie
After using the autosave plugin for notepad++, the need to manually press
ctrl+s in excel or word annoys me. Why can't I tell these programs to autosave
when they lose focus? Instead, I get weird "autorecover" options that usually
take several minutes to restore my file.

After using an autosave plugin for minecraft server, I'm annoyed by the need
to unfocus notepad++ to get it to save. I would almost rather have my changes
written directly to disk automatically. I don't want to have to think about if
my file is saved or not.

~~~
scarecrowbob
Do you not find use cases where you do -not- want the document saving?

I spend a lot of time editing code that is being served by a local development
server, and much of the time I do not want my changes saved until they are a
complete set simply because I don't need it to start feeding me a bunch of
errors from half-finished code.

Similarly, there are a lot of times when I will open a document, modify or
reformat part of its contents in preparation for copying them somewhere else
with different requirements, and then close the document without saving it.

So aren't there any times in your workflows where you don't want the files
saved unless you explicitly want to commit some changes?

~~~
dragonwriter
Not really, though (and this relates to the first of your examples) I do what
_persisting_ (avoid loss) changes made distinct from _committing_ (identifying
as in a done/stable/ready-for-some-use-besides-continued-editing state)
changes.

------
devindotcom
Heh, I wrote about this:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/14/iconoclasm/)

The reflection of the real world in the virtual world has to do with
abstractions, usually going back to among the earliest of concepts that had a
similar function at the time but not necessarily for the current age. Which is
why we still have pencils, clouds, houses, and arrows instead of ... try to
think of something better.

------
yuhong
My personal favorite is the word "chipset" from PC hardware.

~~~
stephengillie
I always thought that referred to the "set of chips" that were integral to
motherboard operation -- during my enthusiast years these were the bios and
cmos, HDD controllers, then northbridge and southbridge controller, and
eventually audio and network integrated circuits.

~~~
csense
I'm not really a hardware person, but I always thought "chipset" meant the on-
board non-CPU chips that don't drive external hardware, but are nonetheless an
essential part of the PC architecture expected to be present by all OS's, like
the 8253 timer [1], the PIC [2], or the DMA controller [3].

By contrast, I'd say hardware like the 16550 UART [4] isn't part of the
chipset, rather it's part of the serial port which it drives.

> northbridge and southbridge controller

Yeah, memory and I/O control is part of the chipset too, since a CPU without
I/O or memory is just an expensive paperweight (or, if powered, an expensive
heater).

> HDD controllers, audio and network integrated circuits.

I'd consider these to be more like devices or device drivers.

> bios and cmos

This is kind of a special case. If you ask a CPU guy, it's not a part of the
chipset, they're just memory modules with different properties from normal
RAM. If you ask a motherboard guy, it is part of the chipset. It depends on
who you ask.

I can't really cite these distinctions anywhere, it's more along the lines of
the intuitions I've picked up from spending decades around computers.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8253](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8253)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Interrupt_Controll...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Interrupt_Controller)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550)

~~~
stephengillie
I stand thoroughly corrected.

------
teh_klev
Scott Hanselman wrote a similar article last year [1]

[1]:
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Oth...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx)

------
hackmiester
Phones haven't hung in decades? Does the author truly believe offices don't
have phones anymore?

~~~
randallu
No, they used to hang so you could "hang up".

~~~
jlgreco
Plenty of phones are still wall mounted. The most common place to see them is
wherever there are red emergency phones.

------
mmphosis
who cares because "Save" has become obsolete.

