raveling@Unify.com (Paul Raveling) (06/25/91)
In article <fm=l1-r@rpi.edu>, prisoner@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Allen S. Firstenberg) writes: > This is exactly the problem that occurs with _ANY_ interface, but is > particularly obvious with GUIs - how do you know that your graphical icon > will mean something to the user. > > The answer - as far as I can tell - is that you can't. Good point. In surveying interactive design tools (alias user interface designers) at Xhibition it was obvious that everyone realized icons weren't enough. A common trend is to show BOTH text and an icon. In some current work I've been trying to design icons with appropriate text embedded in them. Some design tools allow switching between text and iconic renditions. Among these, people usually preferred to demonstrate with icons but use text. I didn't find anyone who could recall what the standard Motif icons were well enough to use them in their own company's product. It may be true that one picture is worth a thousand words, but that may be a different thousand words for everyone who looks at the picture. > Then why use graphical icons at all? Icons can be valuable for rapid recognition of GUI objects, especially when the equivalent text would be relatively long. SOMETIMES it's easier to identify something with a simple icon than to find equivalent concise text. Unfortunately that's not true most of the time. Aside from being cryptic, icons usually devour more screen real estate than text, producing clutter and sometimes limiting the user's access to information. Icons DO belong in user interfaces to some extent, but we'd better be aware of when they are or are not the best way to meet the user's requirements. ------------------ Paul Raveling Raveling@Unify.com
neil@cadreor.uucp (Neil Van Dyke) (06/26/91)
In article <xrdslcn@Unify.Com> raveling@Unify.com (Paul Raveling) writes: >In article <fm=l1-r@rpi.edu>, prisoner@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Allen S. >Firstenberg) writes: > >> This is exactly the problem that occurs with _ANY_ interface, but is >> particularly obvious with GUIs - how do you know that your graphical icon >> will mean something to the user. >> >> The answer - as far as I can tell - is that you can't. > >Good point. In surveying interactive design tools (alias user interface >designers) at Xhibition it was obvious that everyone realized icons weren't >enough. A common trend is to show BOTH text and an icon. In some current >work I've been trying to design icons with appropriate text embedded in them. The GUI used by our CASE environment, Teamwork, makes use of textual icons. The text is basically the same as that used for the window title, which helps me associate the icon with the window that it represents. On a tangent, one valuable quality of the GUI is that it is consistent across many platforms -- it looks and behaves *exactly* the same on a SPARCstation 2 as it does on a VAXstation, HP, OS/2 PC, etc. -- Neil W. Van Dyke, Co-op Student, neil@cadreor, (503) 690-1586 Cadre Technologies Inc., Unified CASE Division, Beaverton, Oregon Disclaimer: "I don't get paid enough to speak for my employer."