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I changed the UX in my mobile app from text only to icon + text by default in menus, buttons, and links. There are several reasons I made the switch, but the p

I changed the UX in my mobile app from text only to icon + text by default in menus, buttons, and links. There are several reasons I made the switch, but the primary reason is that it makes it easier to build a kind of muscle memory for navigating and performing particular actions. In essence, the text is there for new users and the icons are there for experienced users.

TrianguloY 9mo ago
This. I like icons (and colors, but those are still mostly missing) to quickly find a frequent action. If the menu is always the same you can learn the position, but with dynamic entries it's way more difficult.
nmilo 9mo ago
+1. I love icons, just be consistent. That MacOS example is egregious
- bromuro 9mo ago
  In my language “egregious” means “very good”. In English means both very good and very bad. What’s your meaning here? Just to be consistent :)
  - 1986 9mo ago
    In practice, "egregious" in English never means very good
    - itishappy 9mo ago
      It used to!
      - DonHopkins 9mo ago
        Literally. Oh wait, I mean not literally?
        macintux 9mo ago
        Arguably.
        DonHopkins 9mo ago
        I could care less! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820457 https://web.archive.org/web/20150406073147/https://jarrettheather.com/wordcrimes/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150406073147/https://jarretthe...
        antonvs 9mo ago
        https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-less-is-not-as-irrational-or-ungrammatical-as-you-might-think.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-le... I tend to assume that anyone who objects to “I could care less” has never lived in the New York City area. See the mention of Yiddish in the above link. But for some who object to it, that’s the issue: it’s a shibboleth of a culture they’re not part of.
        DonHopkins 9mo ago
        If you're a fan of de-emphasizing your agency with the passive voice, then you can say "less could be cared for by me" or just "less could be cared for" if you totally want to totally avoid responsibility for not caring. I loved MrHeather's comment (who worked with Weird Al to animate Word Crimes): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823632 MrHeather on April 9, 2020 | parent | next [–] When I first met with Al about this project, I was quick to point out that linguists would disagree with about a third of the "advice" he's giving out. His immediate reply was "WELL THEY'RE WRONG"--really loudly in the "Weird Al" character voice. In my mind the joke is that the song's narrator is a know-it-all character that shouldn't be taken entirely seriously. But on the other hand, a lot of educators have contacted me to tell me they use the song as a learning tool.
      - spudlyo 9mo ago
        I think it used to just mean "singular", from the Latin grex, gregis meaning herd, and e/ex meaning "out of". It could mean singularly bad or singularly good I guess in English, but in Latin I think it had more of a connotation of exceptional, extraordinary, eminent.
    - yakshaving_jgt 9mo ago
      This hasn't been my experience.
- concinds 9mo ago
  Other built-in Tahoe apps have more consistent indentations and far more icons. The Safari team (not the WebKit team, the people building the app wrapping it) just phoned it in with the menu icons. They also somehow disabled the Tahoe window opening animation.
- lavataco 9mo ago
  Yes, just consistently line them up and it would be fine. There’s plenty of UX research saying icon+label improves recognition and task speed. NN Group is a good resource for this.
maxloh 9mo ago
Exactly. Reading a line of text is a lot slower than recognizing an icon. Those icons are for power users who are really familiar with the app.
- petepete 9mo ago
  This is true when you know what you're looking for, the icons are distinct and you have good eyesight.
marginalia_nu 9mo ago
It's kind of a shame how we keep trying to make icons look uniform, either in color, or in shape. Like I open the app drawer on my Android phone and there are like 16 different icons, all different Google apps, all are round and various abstract configurations of the same exact four colors. Feels like we're falling into the same trap that Gothic handwriting did with the minims. Yeah it looks very pretty but it's almost completely illegible since we've taken away all the things that help set icons apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/File:Minims_(palaeography).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/Fi...
- mook 9mo ago
  Yeah, I learned that using Netscape 6 with a row of blue balls for icons; going from the older Mozilla builds with the Netscape 4-style icons it was a definite downgrade. Pheonix had a row of orange balls; they later switched to IE-style icons with distinct shapes, which was better. The recent Android releases where everything is a squircle really sucks too.
- lavataco 9mo ago
  Google has been universally panned for using their logos as app icons. I think most people in this thread are talking about UI vs app icons (essentially avatars for apps at this point).
  - marginalia_nu 9mo ago
    Visually uniformity is a broad trend that affects both areas. The monochrome line-art UI icons that are used everywhere are every bit as bad as Google's app icons. Here are some icons I screenshotted off a website. I challenge you to tell me what they mean http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons2.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons2.png Hint: „ǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ ʎɹʇ„ sı dn oʇ ƃuıʇuıod ʍoɹɹɐ ǝɥʇ puɐ „sǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ„ sı ǝqoʃƃ ǝɥ⊥
itishappy 9mo ago
I feel like shortcuts are often enough. They function quite like this: a symbolic language that allows you to build up an intuition. They use icons that you already know, and instead of being bespoke per designer (how many different save icons are there?) they work across your entire OS. The muscle memory you build, instead of being bespoke per menu (and dynamic in time), allows you to skip the menu entirely!

TrianguloY 9mo ago

This. I like icons (and colors, but those are still mostly missing) to quickly find a frequent action. If the menu is always the same you can learn the position, but with dynamic entries it's way more difficult.

nmilo 9mo ago

+1. I love icons, just be consistent. That MacOS example is egregious

bromuro 9mo ago
In my language “egregious” means “very good”. In English means both very good and very bad. What’s your meaning here? Just to be consistent :)
- 1986 9mo ago
  In practice, "egregious" in English never means very good
  - itishappy 9mo ago
    It used to!
    - DonHopkins 9mo ago
      Literally. Oh wait, I mean not literally?
      - macintux 9mo ago
        Arguably.
        DonHopkins 9mo ago
        I could care less! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820457 https://web.archive.org/web/20150406073147/https://jarrettheather.com/wordcrimes/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150406073147/https://jarretthe...
        antonvs 9mo ago
        https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-less-is-not-as-irrational-or-ungrammatical-as-you-might-think.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/why-i-could-care-le... I tend to assume that anyone who objects to “I could care less” has never lived in the New York City area. See the mention of Yiddish in the above link. But for some who object to it, that’s the issue: it’s a shibboleth of a culture they’re not part of.
        DonHopkins 9mo ago
        If you're a fan of de-emphasizing your agency with the passive voice, then you can say "less could be cared for by me" or just "less could be cared for" if you totally want to totally avoid responsibility for not caring. I loved MrHeather's comment (who worked with Weird Al to animate Word Crimes): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823632 MrHeather on April 9, 2020 | parent | next [–] When I first met with Al about this project, I was quick to point out that linguists would disagree with about a third of the "advice" he's giving out. His immediate reply was "WELL THEY'RE WRONG"--really loudly in the "Weird Al" character voice. In my mind the joke is that the song's narrator is a know-it-all character that shouldn't be taken entirely seriously. But on the other hand, a lot of educators have contacted me to tell me they use the song as a learning tool.
    - spudlyo 9mo ago
      I think it used to just mean "singular", from the Latin grex, gregis meaning herd, and e/ex meaning "out of". It could mean singularly bad or singularly good I guess in English, but in Latin I think it had more of a connotation of exceptional, extraordinary, eminent.
  - yakshaving_jgt 9mo ago
    This hasn't been my experience.
concinds 9mo ago
Other built-in Tahoe apps have more consistent indentations and far more icons. The Safari team (not the WebKit team, the people building the app wrapping it) just phoned it in with the menu icons. They also somehow disabled the Tahoe window opening animation.
lavataco 9mo ago
Yes, just consistently line them up and it would be fine. There’s plenty of UX research saying icon+label improves recognition and task speed. NN Group is a good resource for this.

maxloh 9mo ago

Exactly. Reading a line of text is a lot slower than recognizing an icon. Those icons are for power users who are really familiar with the app.

petepete 9mo ago
This is true when you know what you're looking for, the icons are distinct and you have good eyesight.

marginalia_nu 9mo ago

It's kind of a shame how we keep trying to make icons look uniform, either in color, or in shape. Like I open the app drawer on my Android phone and there are like 16 different icons, all different Google apps, all are round and various abstract configurations of the same exact four colors. Feels like we're falling into the same trap that Gothic handwriting did with the minims. Yeah it looks very pretty but it's almost completely illegible since we've taken away all the things that help set icons apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/File:Minims_(palaeography).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/Fi...

mook 9mo ago
Yeah, I learned that using Netscape 6 with a row of blue balls for icons; going from the older Mozilla builds with the Netscape 4-style icons it was a definite downgrade. Pheonix had a row of orange balls; they later switched to IE-style icons with distinct shapes, which was better. The recent Android releases where everything is a squircle really sucks too.
lavataco 9mo ago
Google has been universally panned for using their logos as app icons. I think most people in this thread are talking about UI vs app icons (essentially avatars for apps at this point).
- marginalia_nu 9mo ago
  Visually uniformity is a broad trend that affects both areas. The monochrome line-art UI icons that are used everywhere are every bit as bad as Google's app icons. Here are some icons I screenshotted off a website. I challenge you to tell me what they mean http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons2.png http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons2.png Hint: „ǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ ʎɹʇ„ sı dn oʇ ƃuıʇuıod ʍoɹɹɐ ǝɥʇ puɐ „sǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ„ sı ǝqoʃƃ ǝɥ⊥

itishappy 9mo ago

I feel like shortcuts are often enough. They function quite like this: a symbolic language that allows you to build up an intuition. They use icons that you already know, and instead of being bespoke per designer (how many different save icons are there?) they work across your entire OS. The muscle memory you build, instead of being bespoke per menu (and dynamic in time), allows you to skip the menu entirely!