
The best icon is a text label - ZeljkoS
http://thomasbyttebier.be/blog/the-best-icon-is-a-text-label
======
dizzystar
I remember getting into a debate about this subject with a self-described UI
expert. It was part enlightening and part frustrating. He failed to see the
point that so many of his ideas were US-centric, and didn't make sense in any
context outside of English-speaking languages, and to be honest, they barely
made sense in English. The author brings up Gmail, which has an icon for
"archive" that makes zero sense no matter how I try to connect the dot, but at
least Gmail gives you and out: turn the confusing icons to text.

Despite being a programmer -- but not front end work -- I find myself
struggling more and more with UI and especially icons. I think so much of it
reflects the current trend of zero empathy for the end-user. Fortunately, I
know enough about computers to get around many of these issues, but icons are
the one area that I still struggle with.

Unless you have some site with several million users, teaching end-users is a
wasted effort, and it does well to either piggy-back on other ideas or use
text. Even Facebook is using text, and it seems a little odd that anyone
smaller would feel they have some lessons to teach the end-user about UI. UI,
in my opinion, doesn't mean "pretty," it means "usable," which is sort of
implied by U meaning "user." If a significant portion of your user-base is
computer illiterate, which will often be the default, it does well to UI to
the lowest common denominator. Once your user presses the back button because
your icons made them feel stupid, you lost a customer, and that is a very high
price for "pretty."

~~~
ploxiln
I don't think this is "zero empathy for the end-user", I think this is
desperation. As companies and "product managers" get more statistical data on
real-world clicks and usage and do more usability studies, they see that 90%
of users don't know how to do anything. And they get desperate to "fix" that.

They go for drastic re-designs, get rid of all the text because "nobody" reads
it, hide all the features because they "confuse" and "intimidate" users and
"nobody" uses them, and end up with something that requires a young
professional software developer like me some real sleuthing to figure out, on
behalf of friends and family.

Then, when 95% of users don't know how to do anything, they get more
desperate, and the result is even worse...

~~~
frik
UI usage statistics are often biased (power user deactivate tracking). A/B
testing and watching real end users using your product is better.

~~~
on_and_off
>power user deactivate tracking

Is that a thing ? I can't speak in general but I know that for the large
mobile app I am working on, we are slowly migrating to our own solution and I
highly doubt that users could deactivate it.

~~~
fatratchet
I think it's ment in the sense that power users are by far the most likely
people to disable telemetry or "Send usage data to help improve this software"
functions, if such a setting is offered.

Especially if the option is buried somewhere deep in the settings menu. Also
the most likely users to have adblockers, though that's getting more and more
common.

~~~
rmc
If it's a web app, you can't do that.

~~~
detaro
Depends. If you use a third-party, client side telemetrics provider it's
probably on blocklists. If you track usage yourself on the server or
integrated into your JS, then yes, you'll probably get good data.

------
pool
For someone who follows HN somewhat, I really don't keep up on any current
cool-and-hyped stuff. I'll just see websites become more and more useless with
three-stripe icons for menus and then just random mysterious icons, and I'll
tell myself that that no doubt these no-context meaningless icons must be
derived from whatever iphones are doing this week.

~~~
CaptSpify
I always think "Am I turning into a stereotypical old person? Unable to use a
computer?" I always feel like I'm just out of touch.

~~~
pool
I guess we gain perspective. We have the stereotype of old people being cranky
and stupid (like I come from the era of cd-rom cupholder jokes, faxing images
of floppies, etc.), but probably there were intelligent old people out there
telling us about missing context and we didn't listen or by its nature what
they had to say couldn't get press or something.

~~~
honestcoyote
I think you're on to something huge and important.

Some years ago I was working for an educational software company. We sold
directly to schools. As expected, we'd get a lot of feedback from teachers
using the product. For a while, everyone from the execs on down would ignore
this feedback with a laugh. The majority of teachers we dealt with were
absolutely clueless about anything involving software. Their reports reflected
this ineptness.

One day, I had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, these people were worth
listening to. We went over the written feedback, translated their ramblings
into something approximating proper bug reports, and it turned out they were
doing a wonderful job of pointing out many of the problems (especially UI)
hiding in our blind spots.

We had dismissed them because of a perceived cluelessness, and probably
because of some internalized ageism & sexism (most of these teachers were
middle aged+ women and most of my team was not). And yet when we finally
listened to them, we put out an update which led to several accolades, a
sudden drop-off in complaints, and probably our best selling product.

~~~
pool
Do you remember whether your epiphany seemed to stem from something, or just
happened?

~~~
honestcoyote
We were in a crunch to get version 2.0 out. Had the weekly progress meeting
with the director. He had received some feedback from our remote sales team
and he read one out loud that he thought was particularly funny. And it was,
at least at first. Sounded like a old person flailing around with computers.
But, then it hit me. This teacher was describing an edge case where a certain
sequence of buttons would cause the whole program to lock up.

It was funny in part because the sequence wasn't something any of us would
consider logical. So we had never tested for it. But I was able to duplicate
the crash on my system and fixed it.

That was the epiphany. I convinced the director to push out the release date
and we went through the backlog of ramblings and rants. Over half of them
ended up being very useful.

------
js8
I think we forgot many of the lessons from the 90s, in naive attempt to
emulate Apple. Here's list of standard things that every application in the
90s had, that are frequently missing from the current UIs:

\- Menu - Typically at the top of the screen or window, you can go there and
find everything you can do with the application, at the consistent place;
moreover, as you go over menu entries, an helpful explanation what does what
will appear at the bottom of the screen.

\- Toolbar - A place which has most commonly used tools. They are represented
by icons, text, or both (and you can actually make a choice in settings).
Typically, you can configure the toolbar to your heart's content. Toolbars can
also depend on the context.

\- Context menu - Right clicking on some object will give you menu of things
that you can do with that object. Again, explanation of what each of these
actions does appears helpfully at the bottom of the screen.

\- Tooltips - As you mouse over any UI element, it will helpfully explain you
what it's purpose.

\- Buttons - Things that are clickable look visually differently than other
things that are not. For example, they have different shading. Buttons may
also give feedback that they are clickable when you mouse over them. Also, if
you click thing that is clickable, it will give a feedback that it was clicked
by changing the shading.

I think the big problem here is that UX/UI people want to be artists and so
create art, not useful application for end users (which often means follow
some standard!). So the end result is even more disastrous when programmers
design UI (at least they are rational about it, in some sense), but the cause
is the same - it's putting your own ego (behold at my artistic creation!) in
front of actual usability.

~~~
herval
While some of these are obvious - removing borders from buttons on iOS made
everyone confused, in my personal observation - others are not necessarily "a
naive attempt to emulate Apple". Eg.: you can't have (useful|easy to figure
out) tooltips or "right click" on touchscreen devices.

~~~
js8
That's because touchscreen devices suck for the real work! Their popularity is
actually mostly due to Apple, too. Still, that's not an excuse, think out of
the box, come up with some other way to do the same thing.

There are ways. Some applications for example had a "query" button which let
you examine the UI, what each element does. I don't see why touch devices
couldn't have the same thing as a (hardware) button.

Steve Jobs hated buttons, but they have their place. If you eliminate all of
them, of course you end up less productive.

And yeah, unfortunately, my list is _very_ obvious.

------
brenschluss
> Don’t use an icon if its meaning isn’t a 100% clear to everyone. When in
> doubt, skip the icon. Reside to simple copy. A text label is always clearer.

The article is misguided, in that it assumes that the meaning of an icon only
exists in the lines/color/visual form of the icon. Icons are __visual language
__. You have to _teach_ the user what the icon means. Either the user has seen
the icon before (such as in airports), or if the user hasn't, your UI has to
accommodate that.

Once that happens, then icons are way faster.

Icons are like visual acronyms. The sequence of letters 'T', 'C', 'P', 'I',
'P' means nothing to someone who doesn't already know what 'Transmission
Control Protocol/Internet Protocol' is, but once you do, TCP-IP is way faster
to recognize, speak, type, and to share.

~~~
com2kid
> You have to teach the user what the icon means.

Recognition speed presumably goes up with familiarity. I have Age - 6 years of
experience reading, I have far less than that with whatever icon you come up
with.

Let's take starting an app as an example.

On my Smartphone I use the email client "Nine". I probably open up the app
manually (versus tapping on a notification) about 5 or 6 times a day.

It took me ~3-5 months of use to be able to look for the icon first versus
looking for the text. Note that this is WITH keeping the icon in the exact
same place on my home screen the entire time.

So that is what, 450 impressions for, well, no real speed improvement.

In a sea of words, a good icon can help an app stand out. But I'd argue that a
good textual name helps more.

If you have multiple products, having your company name start off the title of
all your products just means I cannot find your product in my alphabetized app
list.

Changing app names is another huge problem. Google's constant re-branding of
how I send SMSs on my phone has been very unconductive to me remembering
anything. Half the messaging apps out there have the same type of icon (a
speech bubble), the textual names make them unique.

That said Facebook cheats by calling theirs Messenger. :)

Also, enough blue icons. Stop it. Everything is one of 3 shades of blue, gross
color differentiation kicks in WAY before shape matching does. The three
easiest apps to find on phone are the three apps that still have "out of
fashion" black icons.

> Icons are like visual acronyms.

I disagree that the analogy is 100%. Our brains have this giant section
dedicated to nothing but recognizing characters in our native written
language. Sure we have a lot of brain power going to shape recognition in
general, but character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that
it should be our go to.

~~~
conanbatt
> character recognition is so incredibly trained in our heads that it should
> be our go to.

This is also a problem. You cant avoid reading text when its presented to you,
so extra text makes the page cluttery, and hard to find the text you really
want to read. It is very useful to replace an ever same-looking label for an
recognizable icon (Like "Close", "Open", "Save" etc).

~~~
Retra
I don't think you're correct. Yes, you can't avoid reading text, but you spend
far less effort reading it than you would trying to decipher icons, which you
also can't avoid doing if you want to know how to use the program.

------
rconti
I always laugh when I see that "unclear laundry icons" image, because I
recently had the experience of trying to use a combined washer/dryer machine
in a foreign country. The icons truly are asinine, you can't even get close to
guessing what you want.

For fun, I looked it up. Some of the icons are obvious, a few make sense _once
you know the basics_ , and still others seem almost sillier once explained.

[http://www.textileaffairs.com/lguide.htm](http://www.textileaffairs.com/lguide.htm)

~~~
roywiggins
I encountered this machine, which had a manual on top, hooray! But it didn't
include explanations of any of the symbols:

[https://imgur.com/Sdwrvqv](https://imgur.com/Sdwrvqv)

I ended up going for "40 degrees shirts and pants" since that matched what I
was actually trying to wash, but God help anyone trying to use that machine
with any specific requirements.

~~~
chei0aiV
"aws 51012 labels" brought this as the first result:

[http://docs.whirlpool.eu/_doc/W10802912EN.pdf](http://docs.whirlpool.eu/_doc/W10802912EN.pdf)

------
yati
One of the best things I've read lately. At my last job, I voiced exactly the
same concerns over the clarity of icons, and was always told that the users
are going to get used to it after training (it was an enterprise product). It
was really frustrating as a (back-end) programmer to load up my work in the
browser and to hover over each icon every time to test it. I didn't get used
to it, no one else ever was going to.

------
userbinator
The fundamental problem with icons is that they can mean so many different
things, as the example with washing shows. I've heard this summed up as "a
picture is worth a thousand words, but you don't want a thousand words when
one will do."

I don't use Apple Mail, so this is an example of what a completely new user
--- albeit one who has used computers for a long time --- thinks when they see
those icons along the top:

\- It's a closed envelope. Mail? Send? Close?

\- Write? Edit? Compose? Sign?

\- No idea what this is.

\- Trash can. Deleted items? Delete?

\- Left-pointing arrow --- but coming from bottom and looking like it expands
outward. Back? Open message in separate window?

\- Two left-pointing arrows. Rewind?

\- Forward to next message? And why is this arrow not coming out of the
bottom, unlike the two to its left?

\- Flag. This is probably the clearest of them all.

~~~
Animats
_" It's a closed envelope. Mail? Send?"_

On web sites, it used to be "send mail to site operator". Now it's "spam this
page to someone else so we can monetize it."

------
TillE
I'd love to see some empirical data, but my intuition is that text + colored
icon is the ideal (in terms of how quickly you can find what you want) for
both new and experienced users. Every little clue helps navigation, and makes
me feel more confident about using an application.

~~~
adevine
When I see a pushback against icon-only buttons, I think a lot of it has to do
with the fact that the mobile space is changing so rapidly that things don't
have a chance to "settle down" like they did for previous technologies.

I mean, I don't think it's inherently obvious that a triangle pointing to the
right means play, a square means stop, and a circle means record. However, it
didn't take cassette players and VCRs to be out that long before everyone knew
what they meant. In that case, I think having more info (like the text 'Play')
is unnecessary.

In the mobile space, I feel like there is pushback because it's also not
immediately apparent that 3 horizontal lines means "menu". I wonder how long
that will be the case, though.

~~~
lazerwalker
I feel like the hamburger button is a special example, since the fact that
your mobile app has a "here's where we shoved the features we couldn't fit in
anywhere else" menu is usually a smell that you have deeper design issues at
the information architecture level.

~~~
daveguy
Hamburger button? Is that what people are calling the three lines button? I
think that's one that will catch on. I didn't get it at first, but I think now
it's here to stay. It also isn't necessarily a sign of bad design. I think
it's mostly used as the "main menu" on a small mobile screen interface where
you typically use the majority of the screen for information display. Not a
bad design at all.

------
mschuster91
If you decide to use icons, offer a hover-tooltip.

Even if you decide to use a textual button, offer a hover tooltip if there's a
keyboard shortcut. (Hello phpStorm, I'm looking at YOU!)

~~~
flakmonkey
This doesn't work for touch-based devices, unfortunately.

~~~
Mindless2112
In Android apps you can long-press action-bar icons to get a tooltip --
assuming the developer provided one.

------
archagon
I thought about this a lot while designing my latest iPad app. On the one
hand, icons make everything look beautiful and cohesive, and give you an
almost intuitive sense of the UI if done right. On the other hand, it's hard
to convey the meaning of a complicated tool using an icon alone, and I _hate_
guess-and-checking the meanings of icons in other apps. My solution was to
keep unlabelled icons for the obvious UI elements (in my case, undo/redo,
play/rewind/record, erase, and metronome) and add small text labels underneath
the icons that referred to more complicated or unique actions. For visual
coherence, the labeled icons were kept in their own section:
[http://i.imgur.com/EeLzlVH.png](http://i.imgur.com/EeLzlVH.png)

So yeah, I think the article is spot on.

------
jd3
I agree. Whenever the option to change icons to text labels is available, I
will use it. It's a shame that Apple's finder is ostensibly shit when it comes
to text label support. No forward, no change/shadow when `pressed`, etc. It's
been maddening trying to use most websites these days that load 20MB of
javascript and abstract their interface elements behind incomprehensible
picons and boxes.

[http://i.imgur.com/YyOYqxV.png](http://i.imgur.com/YyOYqxV.png)

~~~
Cyberdog
I have no idea what that screenshot is of, but it sure as hell ain't the
proper Finder. Maybe it's a look-alike skin for Gnome or something?

~~~
jd3
I have skinned my OS X install with custom fonts[0], traffic lights[1], and
icons[2][3].

[0]:
[https://github.com/dtinth/YosemiteAndElCapitanSystemFontPatc...](https://github.com/dtinth/YosemiteAndElCapitanSystemFontPatcher)

[1]:
[https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine](https://github.com/alexzielenski/ThemeEngine)

[2]: [http://freemacsoft.net/liteicon/](http://freemacsoft.net/liteicon/)

[3]:
[https://www.xs4all.nl/~ronaldpr/emaculation/Mac_Icons_and_Te...](https://www.xs4all.nl/~ronaldpr/emaculation/Mac_Icons_and_Textures.sit.hqx)

as you can see, I'm obviously a SCARY elite hacker that should not be messed
with ;)

[http://i.imgur.com/bl5hdAN.png](http://i.imgur.com/bl5hdAN.png)

~~~
flycaliguy
Do you experience any performance issues with a skinned OS X? I'm a graphical
junkie and would love to start hacking away at my GUI.

~~~
jd3
Uh, no. Maybe if you use that awful flavours program that hooks into the
system graphics API and swizzles all of the changes, but I patch the system
files themselves (ThemePark, [S]ArtFileTool, ThemeEngine, whatever AZielenski
comes up with next). In fact, the GraphiteAppearance and SystemAppearance.car
files are /smaller/ than they were when I started. All you need to do is log
out/back in, restart, or simply kill and restart the program for the changes
to take effect. You probably need to disable that incredibly stupid rootless
`feature` on 10.11 though

------
maniacalrobot
I'd agree that many Icons are context sensitive and many require the user to
learn their use, but they do, mostly, provide a language agnostic approach to
navigation. An icon is the same size in any language, whereas the title could
be very different.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'd agree that many Icons are context sensitive and many require the user to
> learn their use, but they do, mostly, provide a language agnostic approach
> to navigation.

They are "language agnostic" in that an icon system is _its own language_.

~~~
dmckeon
And it sometime appears that almost every icon system is its own special
snowflake, unique more for its creator's convenience, with more creativity
than reusability.

The result is more like having dozens or hundreds of different dialects of
Esperanto - each system intends to be rational and useful, but the overall
effect on users of multiple icon systems is more like cacophony than
expressive consistency.

OTOH, the core challenge of using text labels is finding texts that work and
are meaningful and reasonably consistent across dozens of written natural
languages.

------
n0us
Non-text icons is one of the reasons I don't use IDEs all that often. I'm
always wondering "damn, what did that icon do again?" or "I wonder where I can
find the button to run this thing" but then I click the wrong thing sometimes
and totally screw up my layout then spend a while looking for another button
that will get me partially back to the way I was before I can even start
looking for the button I wanted again. I guess I would get used to it
eventually but it bugs me.

(I'm looking at you Eclipse)

------
masklinn
On the one hand text labels are convenient when you can read them, on the
other hand when you can't (say because you're in japan and japan loves the
hell out of its text labels) icons you might be able to decipher _are_ better
than text you definitely won't.

------
makecheck
The best icon is one you can opt-into. Don't eliminate them.

For instance I liked OS X's original toolbars, in that you could easily shift
between modes that displayed text or did not display text. (Then they entered
their phase where toolbars couldn't be customized and all icons were the same
shape, which is far less sensible.)

~~~
joveian
I agree; e.g. word processors, photo editing, etc. can have vast numbers of
options and at some frequency of use having a bunch of little icons on the
screen is a reasonable choice vs. alternative. Having the traditional "text,
icons, or text and icons" option seems like a good deal there defaulting to
something with text.

I also set up my browser such that half of the tab bar is favicon-only
bookmarks; I can very easily get to the few sites that I look at most days or
want a reminder to look at. I also use favicons to identify tabs. I remove
most of the standard browser icons in the interface and just leave the few I
use regularly, so I can remember what they all do.

So maybe it is best to think of icons as visual interface optimization that is
best performed by the user. Especially for web sites or default application
modes I agree with the author that there should be text involved most of the
time.

------
ape4
No mentioned of the red | yellow | green buttons at the top of a window in
MacOS.

------
iffycan
Amen to the Apple Mail icon problem he mentions. It gets me every time, too.

~~~
DrJokepu
Ctrl-click anywhere on the toolbar and select either "Icon and Text" or "Text
Only". Problem solved!

~~~
RadioactiveMan
Great to know, but I wonder "how on Earth is anyone supposed to know they can
do that?"

------
statoshi
Indeed; I've noticed often while observing people of older generations that
one of their big problems using apps today (especially mobile) is that they
don't have the same understanding of iconography as younger generations. It's
usually not intuitive for them.

~~~
jrapdx3
Is it really a matter of _intuition_ or just familiarity with the interface? I
suspect it's the latter, likely older people you've encountered aren't "early
adopters" of technologies vs. their younger contemporaries and simply not yet
learned the meaning of the symbols.

OTOH a younger person confronting a piece of "antiquated" equipment, e.g., an
old camera where everything had to be set manually might well feel totally
lost vs. the old-timer who knows how to use it from prior experience.

It's not really a generational thing, more associated with environment,
exposure to the device in question, education and similar factors. It's all
too easy to assume everyone else has the same background and knowledge base as
we ourselves, but that's in fact rarely the case. When others aren't similar
to us, it's not safe to believe their apparent deficits are due solely to
factors like age or obvious personal characteristics.

~~~
dalke
I agree with you.

There's a series which includes examples where kids are asked to use old
technology, like a VCR (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesMOzzNBiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesMOzzNBiQ)
) or rotary phone (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuirEweZvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuirEweZvM)
). They fumble, rather like their grandparents might have fumbled with the
unfamiliar interface when it first came out.

The major difference is that children don't worry so much about making
mistakes and feeling dumb.

------
gburt
Icons, but not text, can be language agnostic and probably more resilient to
cultural variation. Obviously well-recognized icons like arrows fit this
property more so than time and culturally dependent things like floppy disks
for save buttons.

~~~
pinaceae
this english-centric viewpoint of the article really bothers me.

no mention of i18n, no language variation. just try using labels with a more
verbose language like german. welcome to hell.

a good icon works across cultures and languages, allows optimized and pixel-
perfect UI.

~~~
AdmiralACK
As someone who speaks both languages fluently, it doesn't bother me at all.
The iconography could use some tweaking, but this false sense of being
offended is ridiculous.

~~~
pinaceae
what I am saying is that once your app is using multiple languages, is
available in multiple geographies this "just use labels" stuff goes out of the
window.

Cancel becomes what, "Zurücksetzen"? "Abbrechen"? All longer strings, good
luck with your tiny button.

Not even mentioning Mandarin or Japanese yet.

Oder aber das ist einfach Enterprise-Software Problematik und die Consumer-App
Afferl spielen weiter mit ihren Zehen.

------
pavanred
I used to flash different ROMs on my HTC Desire frequently a while back. I was
experimenting with MIUI ROM and accidentally flashed a Chinese ROM. And, it so
happened that I had to travel and I wasn't able to flash an English ROM back
for a couple of days. I was surprised that I could manage just fine for a
couple of days with a Chinese ROM (I don't know Chinese), I remember thinking
about the UX because though I couldn't read the menus, I could manage just
fine using the icons, for example a trash can in messages menu is definitely
delete message.

------
zamalek
On Windows Phone 8.1 the settings screen is "text labels" and is completely
unusable. They added icons in 10 and this resulted in a huge improvement.

Text-only is as-bad as icon-only. Combine the two.

~~~
alejohausner
I always say that a picture, plus a few words, is worth a thousand words.

------
frik
I personally prefer Icon+Text over Text-only. And icon-only is often confusing
on websites/apps - it only works if one uses the website/app regularly like
the Office <=2003 toolbar.

Also the recent trend for black and white icons makes them sometimes harder to
understand. Colorful icons worked fine, in older Office <=2010 and elsewhere.
Though finding a good icon set with 500+ generic icons that fits one needs
means taking compromisses.

------
ipsin
The best icon is a text label, written in the language of the user? Sure.

But the _easiest_ icon is that weird squidgy thing that looks like a ... well,
I don't know, I'm expecting users will click on it and eventually figure it
out. Squidgy thing takes maybe an hour to create. The internationalization
team's SLA is not an hour.

------
mrlyc
I have two modes of thinking when I use a computer program: text mode and
graphics mode. I am in text mode while I am reading or writing. I find icons
confusing as I have to change from text mode to graphics mode to figure out
what the icon means.

The only time I prefer icons is when I am already in graphics mode while using
graphics software.

------
miles_matthias
Definitely agree with this. This is also something we're looking to update,
along with the great article about how the hamburger icon fails on mobile:
[http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/](http://deep.design/the-hamburger-
menu/)

------
intrasight
In browser UX, you simply mouse-over an icon to get it's tooltip. But screens
are big so there's almost always room for labels. In mobile UX, there's just
not much room for labels. I don't see why more apps don't use a tap-and-hold
approach for showing a tooltip.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
I doubt a lot of users would know that you can even do this, as handy as it
is.

------
spurgu
The paradox here is that the most effective UI would be one where you'd have
minimal "signs" (text or otherwise) telling you what to do. The problem with
this is that you'd have to _learn_ how to master it. What we have is a
compromise. Something that tries to cater both to casual as well as power
users.

I'm thinking about for example a swipe based touch interface. A lot of
functions now are click here, then click there, when they could be done in a
simple gesture. But the problem is that one would have to learn the gesture
somehow in the first place. And people don't read manuals, even if there were
any nowadays.

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megablast
Icons can transcend different languages though, a huge boon for small devs.

~~~
artursapek
And using text labels means your labels are different dimensions in different
languages.

~~~
mwcampbell
So? Use an automatic layout algorithm that can deal with that. Users will want
different font sizes for your labels, too.

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leeoniya
also known as Mystery Meat Navigation

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

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alariccole
The article took a wrong turn for me. Seemed to say that there was a fallacy
in assuming frequent users would understand you iconography, then goes on to
praise exactly that, for popular sites.

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laichzeit0
Usability testing with eye tracking software. It's the only way to objectively
show designers how crap their design ideas are. It's not even expensive to get
this done anymore.

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altonzheng
I think companies need to test their UI's with senile people first. Nothing
has given me more insight into user experience than watching my grandma trying
to use an iPad.

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reitanqild
Also on (Windows) desktop you can (could) always hover over to see a
description.

On mobile you have to try and hope it is not the "irrevocably delete thread"
button.

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bsenftner
I was an original Macintosh Beta tester back in 1983, and I raised this exact
same issue. I built all my apps with text + icon buttons and got penalized for
it. One of several reasons why an early Mac beta developer left Mac
development, not writing code for the OS for a decade afterwards. (PC users
were lucky to have Windows 1.0 around that time, and I did well writing GUIs
for corporations that wanted better.)

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ada1981
Wait, I've been googling gcal for the last 2(?) years when my calendar tab
needs populated when I could have just been clicking on the chessboard thing
in gmail??! I was wondering where the hell gcal went!

>> Google decided to hide other apps behind an unclear icon in the Gmail UI,
they apparently got a stream of support requests, like “Where is my Google
Calendar?” <<

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huuu
The best icon has a text label.

I think icons next to a text label are very useful because they guide the eye
so you can quickly see where your buttons are.

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mheiler
Icons are little symbols that are equally incomprehensible in any language.

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WalterBright
Discussed at length a couple days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10738891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10738891)

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andrepd
You level criticism at Twitter for being unclear to new users, then excuse
that same behaviour from Tumblr because meaning is clear to existing users.
Isn't it a bit inconsistent?

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OJFord

      > Facebook as a final example: they lately traded their
      > unclear hamburger menu icon for a frictionless navigation
      > that combines icons with clear copy. Well done
    

No, not well done. They went from almost conforming to the OS' (on Android)
design guidelines, to totally ignoring them.

The 'hamburger' button is not "unclear", because it's so commonplace that at
the very least it has an intuitive meaning in the context of an Android app -
it's where I expect more options, settings, etc. How do I know that is now
kept behind the much less clear icon that seems to show a man moving quickly?

~~~
OJFord
This comment has been unexpectedly contentious - points have been going up and
down in about equal amounts (currently 0) - but nobody wants to comment on why
they disagree?

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fogisland
Various icons without text often make me feel like dumb...

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mirimir
And then there are those of us who block so much crap that icon fonts
sometimes don't load. Hover text is usually enough, though.

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fauigerzigerk
Yes, BUT, you have to look no further than at the top of this page to see how
utterly unclear text labels can be.

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alejohausner
I came here looking for tips on how to turn on text labels in various UIs, and
have not been disappointed.

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jgalt212
Amen, the ribbon is the worst thing to happen to MS office.

------
agumonkey
In latin, for genericity.

~~~
alejohausner
Actually, Latin was once the international language, but has been largely
supplanted by English. Hence if I use English labels in my app, I'm being
cosmopolitan!

