7 ms·

Stop using icons in data tables

122 points by ctward 7mo ago

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
exabrial 7mo ago
I had this experience with an app called Copilot Money. Wonderful native osx app, with a nice dark mode, but between the non-optional-emojis-burning-in-your-retinas in everywhere plus a few missing key features I couldn't take it. I asked their customer service if they could be made optional and they referred me to the suggestion tracker of course.
seanwilson 7mo ago
> When we pack high-density information into a data table or a complex dashboard we are increasing the visual entropy of the entire system. Forcing the brain to decode intricate, non-universal shapes in a tiny 16-pixel footprint, creates a “cognitive tax” that users pay en masse every time they scan the table. What if it's an icon with a simple shape? How does that compare to noising up the table with long phrases and repetitive words? Is the cognitive tax if icons a lot higher or just a little higher? What if it's an app where the user will be using it for hours, so they'll quickly learn what the icons mean and will appreciate the space they save? Is a tick icon really that big a deal in place of "Task completed"? Or a pencil instead of "Edit"? Sometimes you don't have a choice because of lack of space too. There's always tradeoffs to make. Obviously try to avoid icons that are hard to guess though but sometimes that's not always possible. I can't say I've ever felt tired looking at icons in a table, but when designing I have had the experience of replacing wordy repetitive text with some intuitive icons in a complex table and it suddenly looking less intimidating.
- gdulli 7mo ago
  Right, this article overlooks the difference between a first encounter and regular encounters. The concise representation pays off when you do learn it, as long as it's executed well. And I'm fine with a bit of cognitive exploration to figure out a green check and red X scheme rather than see a whole table column filled up with words like "active" and "inactive". The former allows more columns on screen at once. Horizontal scrolling is a worse impediment to assimilating information from a table.
  - simoncion 7mo ago
    I would almost always rather have the words; words are things I can easily search for and manipulate using the text-processing tools in my possession. Personally, my brain "page faults" whenever it has to interpret an emoji, which makes most use of in-line icons far worse than the text they represent. I expect few people have this problem, but I also expect that I'm not the only one with it.
  - ctward 7mo ago
    I agree that certain icons that are common parlance can increase cognition ( vs. x). However I think expanding a users icon lexicon and forcing memorization can actually harm cognitive experience. Our users are context switching across dozens if not hundreds of digital experiences a day. Forcing memory recall is a tax. The question is always "whats the ROI?" IMO color and words go just as far as an icon without relying on net new visual language. As per your comment on horizontal scrolling, I couldn't agree more. Horizontal scrolling is booty. However, depending on the job to be done you can avoid overly wide tables with customizable columns, expandable rows, hover states, and strategic truncation. I certainly would prefer those strategies over relying on a unique icon language that isn't part of the dozen or so immediately recognizable icon schemas already familiar to users.
- cosmic_cheese 7mo ago
  My gut feel (personal experience, not research) is that the whole of the icons' nature is important. Them having simple shapes doesn't necessarily solve the problem and could in some cases make it worse. Imagine for example a set of icons that are monochrome, open-ended glyphs comprised of a single stroke with line weight similar to that of the text. This could complicate visual parsing greatly due to high visual similarity to text. On the other hand, a 16px checkbox control with subtle gradients, shadows, and depth cues looks absolutely nothing like text and is filtered out by the brain almost automatically (unless of course the checkbox state is pertinent to the user's intent). Same goes for a 16px colorful icon with shading like used to be ubiquitous in desktop operating systems.
  - xattt 7mo ago
    The box itself around a data table label could hint at a state, if the goal is to define only a handful of states (green rounded capsule for a completed state; diamond capsule for an in-progress condition; red square for an error; purple parallelogram for some special condition; etc). Not sure how this is for accessibility in terms of colour selection, but I’m sure this could be fine-tuned.
brulard 7mo ago
I disagree completely. I have hard times parsing the text. Simple icons are a life saver for me in big data tables
- amelius 7mo ago
  What if you don't know the icons yet? And wouldn't colors be just as helpful? Anyway, they should design for the majority. Or use some configurable approach, like with CSS, to make everybody happy. Opinionated is so last year.
  - brulard 7mo ago
    What if I didn't know the words yet? Usage of totally unintuitive icons is obviously wrong. Colors can be helpful too. Colored text - not as concise as recognizable icons. Another non-negligible advantage of icon is, that it is language agnostic. Not everyone is fluent in language they have to use.
NicuCalcea 7mo ago
Another issue the author didn't mention, but I sometimes encounter, is that when you copy richly-formatted tables to paste in Excel or some other software, it often includes unwanted HTML tags. I usually have to use regex or at least a search and replace to make the table sortable and filterable. I imagine this could similarly be an issue with screen readers, but haven't tested it.
- potatoicecoffee 7mo ago
  thats why all data should just be presented in an excel pivot table from the start
  - NicuCalcea 7mo ago
    I certainly wouldn't mind more websites, especially government ones, offering a CSV download option along with their fancy tables.
loeber 7mo ago
I wrote about something very similar a long time ago.[0] The key problem is that most contemporary web design does not follow any idioms. Idioms are conventions of design that are universally understood. Skillful use of idioms makes it much easier to parse what is going on on a given page. Where we are with most applications is that they try to define their own idioms, i.e. their own icons, their own navigation patterns, etc. But this is very arrogant because they're assuming that the user has the time to build that familiarity with all those idioms. This is never the case. Every day I use web applications from nominally mature companies, and they have totally different icon sets for the same actions. This is immensely distracting and hard to read. Every company sees an opportunity to define their own icons, when what they should be doing is using the exact same ones as everyone else because that makes it easy to understand. https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-desig...
calmbonsai 7mo ago
Who is actually doing this routinely and how is this even a problem? For actual data work, any sort of "rich formatting" is no bueno and icons are great for quick reflexive categorization for information-dense habitually used interfaces. They just take a slightly slower learning curve.
rrherr 7mo ago
The title is misleading. The message is really: Stop using unlabeled icons in data tables. It says, "Norman Nielson argues that text + icon has the highest cognitive recall and lowest error rate" Here's what the Nielsen Norman Group says about Icon Usability: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ The conclusion: "Always include a visible text label. As Bruce Tognazzini once said, 'a word is worth a thousand pictures.'" Here's the quote in context: https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html "In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group took on the motto 'A word is worth a thousand pictures.' This still holds true."
- ljm 7mo ago
  WCAG is a standard designed around the web and web-adjacent apps. Am I missing something here? Because accessibility standards are much easier to adhere to now. So the text label always has to be there, but you can also make it visible in the design and it's accessible by default. This is a lesson to be learned by people who want minimalist UIs.
- MomsAVoxell 7mo ago
  It should be noted that the example given by the OP contains ‘poor’ icons which are more a consequence of the nature of the source - i.e. a HR headshot does not an effective workflow make ..
- catlifeonmars 7mo ago
  I took away from the article that I should probably get rid of icons in data tables. I think the reference to Norman Nielsen was confusing. At the end of the article the author likens icons to visual speed bumps in a data table. The implication being to avoid them or at the very least use sparingly.
- jfengel 7mo ago
  The problem for me is when an icon is repeated many times on a page, such as once per row. The word quickly becomes redundant, and the repetition looks ugly. Tables are supposed to be information-dense and wasting screen real estate interferes with the user's task. I haven't found a good general solution to that. Hover doesn't work on mobile. A legend map is hard to locate. "Expert mode" introduces new problems. Sometimes I'll just use an unlabeled button and make whatever it is undoable, so that users can just click and discover. But that's hostile to completely new users.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
uhoh-itsmaciek 7mo ago
Stop blogging on medium. I start to read your post and as I'm scrolling down the page, I get a full-page modal nagging me to subscribe. Why should I listen to anything you have to say about user experience?
- dmix 7mo ago
  If you sign up for free those modals stop showing up.
  - DangitBobby 7mo ago
    Yeah! Nag success!
  - nofriend 7mo ago
    ub0 with all the annoyances lists on also hides it
  - renewiltord 7mo ago
    Anyone who accepts such pattern on read-only website is not authority on UX any longer. It is like security expert who tells you to use same password everywhere. “If you use TOTP with it, you will be quite safe”. Yes, but recommendation reveals lack of knowledge .
  - pimlottc 7mo ago
    Closing the window prevents them as well
- ctward 7mo ago
  Valid point. Should I stand up my own blog or should I use a different platform? What recommendations do you have?
  - uhoh-itsmaciek 7mo ago
    No specific recommendations, sorry. Thanks for taking the feedback seriously, though, and good luck with finding a more reader-friendly platform.
halayli 7mo ago
I am not sure the author knows what spacial frequency means. Taking a well defined measurement unit and using it as an expression feels pretencious.
crazygringo 7mo ago
I literally can't tell what the author is arguing against or for. All the example table images seem fine, and have no captions saying whether they're supposed to be examples of good usage or bad usage. So either I have no idea what "bad" examples of icon usage are because the author doesn't show any, or the author thinks some or all of them are bad when, to me, the icon+text+color examples seem great (and one figure caption indicates icons+labels are best)? Yet the author continues to argue against icons and to use text instead? But never says whether icons+labels are actually better than just text, so we should use them in combination? I'm baffled. For an article arguing for greater clarity, the article itself couldn't be less clear.
- pimlottc 7mo ago
  In-line images should almost always include a caption, especially in a "do this and not that" type of piece
- ctward 7mo ago
  Hey, author here, I'll attempt to clarify. In a data grid or table the relative cognitive load of the page is already very high. Adding iconography to the table body content is often unnecessary and increases visual noise, processing requirements, and generally reduces readability/scanability. I've always felt that icons in this context are a risk or liability instead of a strength. I decided to info dump my findings to my team then published it as an article. I probably could use a good editor to help me next time!
  - crazygringo 7mo ago
    I think you need to show examples of this bad usage, then. Your first image has zero icons in the rows. It has album covers but those aren't icons. Your second and third images show very usage that combines text, color, and relatively standard icons like checkmarks, X's, or in-progress. These are good and if you're trying to suggest these reduce readability, scannability, or add noise, then I'm frankly baffled. Your third image also shows profile images, but again those are not icons. So what are you arguing against? I can't ever remember coming across icons in a datagrid that "added to the relative cognitive load". And if you're arguing against checkmarks or X's, I don't think your arguments hold up. But even with "real" icons -- like, I've seen icons to show if a software package is for Windows or Mac or Linux. If a row is a TV show or a movie. If it's one file or an archive. If there's a PDF file download attached. An alarm icon for something past due. But these all seem totally fine and helpful. They're generally linked to a major feature of the platform that everybody understands, and help scannability. Without clear examples of what you're arguing against, I'm frankly completely lost.
nineteen999 7mo ago
Stop using Stop as a headline. Nobody with a brain is reacting to this (me excluded). Grow up.
krick 7mo ago
Start using icons in data tables! …What? I suppose, if the OP feels he can give you imperative commands, so can I. I'll spare you the pretentious text elaborating the command — it carries as much substance as no text at all, anyway. And, seriously, if you don't use icons in data tables, you should try and see how it feels. For me personally it's the magic trick that often makes all the difference between an unreadable wall of numbers and a vivid, crystal clear picture.
renewiltord 7mo ago
For comparison tables and dense information, overuse of detail is noise. Text is required to avoid a legend, and color is useful to distinguish among many, but icons add no distinction. This is not universal. The classic comparison involves only two icons: green box checked white and red x or red container crossed white. In this case text is unhelpful. I have never found text plus icon useful in a table that has colour.
zx8080 7mo ago
Stop showing fullscreen popups. Please. And no, medium is not the last site in the universe to host at.
- moring 7mo ago
  That was my first thought. A page that talks about cognitive load waits for you to start reading, then throws a newsletter sign-up dialog in your face? The irony... Oh, but it gets better: > We have been sold a lie that icons are the universal language of the modern interface. ... placed directly below a button bar that contains only icons.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
fainpul 7mo ago
I agree with the article. What the author doesn't answer is why we're seeing so many visually noisy tables. He seems to imply that designers don't know any better. There are two different "modes" of looking at a table. One is just "superficially glancing" (like you look at a picture), the other is more like reading, because you look for some specific piece of information. When glancing at a table, the one with more colors and icons looks more pleasing, while plain text looks boring. But when reading the table to get information out of it, the "boring" one (if it's well done) is probably more efficient and a better experience. And here is the problem: when presenting designs to stakeholders, 100% of stakeholders just glance at the table and always prefer the more colorful table with many icons — they don't realize that actual users, who need to get information from the table, would be better off with the "boring" table.
alanbernstein 7mo ago
Stop using email newsletter popups. Stop using images that I can't zoom in to.
- trvz 7mo ago
  Medium puts unlabelled icons above and below the article. When the author writes all this and puts it on there, he can't be taken seriously.
popcorncowboy 7mo ago
Is there a nitter equivalent for medium? I stopped clicking that domain years ago.
TonyStr 7mo ago
No, this is wrong. > When we pack high-density information into a data table or a complex dashboard we are increasing the visual entropy of the entire system. Forcing the brain to decode intricate, non-universal shapes in a tiny 16-pixel footprint, creates a “cognitive tax” that users pay en masse every time they scan the table. This is not how the brain processes icons. Icons have their meanings embedded through related patterns. If you rely on common icons such as x, checkmark, plus, shopping cart, arrows, three dots, etc. the user already associates certain meaning/behaviors with these icons (and will be surprised if they act differently in your application). Introducing new icons is more challenging, because you have to convey their meaning to the user. At no point does the user have to stare at an icon and try to "parse" it pixel-by-pixel. In all of OP's provided examples, the icons are supported by both labels and colors, which removes all ambiguity. You can argue that the icons are pointless in this case, but they certainly do not increase any cognitive load. Is it harder to identify a tiger than a lion, because his fur is covered in stripes?
evolighting 7mo ago
sounds like people are trying to reinvent hieroglyphs.
jFriedensreich 7mo ago
The same could be said for color, just to then go into detail that using color codes on too many columns and with unclear associations are the problem. This is just a weird way to frame an article. Colors and icons are indeed essential to quickly parse and use big amounts of tabular data. All the criticisms the author brings forward are specific problems of some implementations or just poor choices. All this is solved by putting a few key icons in their own column next to the text field they belong to, so users can hide and show them as needed depending on the task. I have eg. a basic indicator that is a red exclamation mark or yellow question mark or green checkmark and another one with a colored icon representation of a category field. Its 100 times easier to get a quick impression and find something than without those. if someone has a problem its 2 clicks to hide the columns, thats the universality of a table ui! Don’t let absolutist click bait articles fool you.

122 points by ctward 7mo ago

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

I had this experience with an app called Copilot Money. Wonderful native osx app, with a nice dark mode, but between the non-optional-emojis-burning-in-your-retinas in everywhere plus a few missing key features I couldn't take it. I asked their customer service if they could be made optional and they referred me to the suggestion tracker of course.

seanwilson 7mo ago

> When we pack high-density information into a data table or a complex dashboard we are increasing the visual entropy of the entire system. Forcing the brain to decode intricate, non-universal shapes in a tiny 16-pixel footprint, creates a “cognitive tax” that users pay en masse every time they scan the table. What if it's an icon with a simple shape? How does that compare to noising up the table with long phrases and repetitive words? Is the cognitive tax if icons a lot higher or just a little higher? What if it's an app where the user will be using it for hours, so they'll quickly learn what the icons mean and will appreciate the space they save? Is a tick icon really that big a deal in place of "Task completed"? Or a pencil instead of "Edit"? Sometimes you don't have a choice because of lack of space too. There's always tradeoffs to make. Obviously try to avoid icons that are hard to guess though but sometimes that's not always possible. I can't say I've ever felt tired looking at icons in a table, but when designing I have had the experience of replacing wordy repetitive text with some intuitive icons in a complex table and it suddenly looking less intimidating.

gdulli 7mo ago
Right, this article overlooks the difference between a first encounter and regular encounters. The concise representation pays off when you do learn it, as long as it's executed well. And I'm fine with a bit of cognitive exploration to figure out a green check and red X scheme rather than see a whole table column filled up with words like "active" and "inactive". The former allows more columns on screen at once. Horizontal scrolling is a worse impediment to assimilating information from a table.
- simoncion 7mo ago
  I would almost always rather have the words; words are things I can easily search for and manipulate using the text-processing tools in my possession. Personally, my brain "page faults" whenever it has to interpret an emoji, which makes most use of in-line icons far worse than the text they represent. I expect few people have this problem, but I also expect that I'm not the only one with it.
- ctward 7mo ago
  I agree that certain icons that are common parlance can increase cognition ( vs. x). However I think expanding a users icon lexicon and forcing memorization can actually harm cognitive experience. Our users are context switching across dozens if not hundreds of digital experiences a day. Forcing memory recall is a tax. The question is always "whats the ROI?" IMO color and words go just as far as an icon without relying on net new visual language. As per your comment on horizontal scrolling, I couldn't agree more. Horizontal scrolling is booty. However, depending on the job to be done you can avoid overly wide tables with customizable columns, expandable rows, hover states, and strategic truncation. I certainly would prefer those strategies over relying on a unique icon language that isn't part of the dozen or so immediately recognizable icon schemas already familiar to users.
cosmic_cheese 7mo ago
My gut feel (personal experience, not research) is that the whole of the icons' nature is important. Them having simple shapes doesn't necessarily solve the problem and could in some cases make it worse. Imagine for example a set of icons that are monochrome, open-ended glyphs comprised of a single stroke with line weight similar to that of the text. This could complicate visual parsing greatly due to high visual similarity to text. On the other hand, a 16px checkbox control with subtle gradients, shadows, and depth cues looks absolutely nothing like text and is filtered out by the brain almost automatically (unless of course the checkbox state is pertinent to the user's intent). Same goes for a 16px colorful icon with shading like used to be ubiquitous in desktop operating systems.
- xattt 7mo ago
  The box itself around a data table label could hint at a state, if the goal is to define only a handful of states (green rounded capsule for a completed state; diamond capsule for an in-progress condition; red square for an error; purple parallelogram for some special condition; etc). Not sure how this is for accessibility in terms of colour selection, but I’m sure this could be fine-tuned.

brulard 7mo ago

I disagree completely. I have hard times parsing the text. Simple icons are a life saver for me in big data tables

amelius 7mo ago
What if you don't know the icons yet? And wouldn't colors be just as helpful? Anyway, they should design for the majority. Or use some configurable approach, like with CSS, to make everybody happy. Opinionated is so last year.
- brulard 7mo ago
  What if I didn't know the words yet? Usage of totally unintuitive icons is obviously wrong. Colors can be helpful too. Colored text - not as concise as recognizable icons. Another non-negligible advantage of icon is, that it is language agnostic. Not everyone is fluent in language they have to use.

NicuCalcea 7mo ago

Another issue the author didn't mention, but I sometimes encounter, is that when you copy richly-formatted tables to paste in Excel or some other software, it often includes unwanted HTML tags. I usually have to use regex or at least a search and replace to make the table sortable and filterable. I imagine this could similarly be an issue with screen readers, but haven't tested it.

potatoicecoffee 7mo ago
thats why all data should just be presented in an excel pivot table from the start
- NicuCalcea 7mo ago
  I certainly wouldn't mind more websites, especially government ones, offering a CSV download option along with their fancy tables.

loeber 7mo ago

I wrote about something very similar a long time ago.[0] The key problem is that most contemporary web design does not follow any idioms. Idioms are conventions of design that are universally understood. Skillful use of idioms makes it much easier to parse what is going on on a given page. Where we are with most applications is that they try to define their own idioms, i.e. their own icons, their own navigation patterns, etc. But this is very arrogant because they're assuming that the user has the time to build that familiarity with all those idioms. This is never the case. Every day I use web applications from nominally mature companies, and they have totally different icon sets for the same actions. This is immensely distracting and hard to read. Every company sees an opportunity to define their own icons, when what they should be doing is using the exact same ones as everyone else because that makes it easy to understand. https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-desig...

calmbonsai 7mo ago

Who is actually doing this routinely and how is this even a problem? For actual data work, any sort of "rich formatting" is no bueno and icons are great for quick reflexive categorization for information-dense habitually used interfaces. They just take a slightly slower learning curve.

rrherr 7mo ago

The title is misleading. The message is really: Stop using unlabeled icons in data tables. It says, "Norman Nielson argues that text + icon has the highest cognitive recall and lowest error rate" Here's what the Nielsen Norman Group says about Icon Usability: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ The conclusion: "Always include a visible text label. As Bruce Tognazzini once said, 'a word is worth a thousand pictures.'" Here's the quote in context: https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html "In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group took on the motto 'A word is worth a thousand pictures.' This still holds true."

ljm 7mo ago
WCAG is a standard designed around the web and web-adjacent apps. Am I missing something here? Because accessibility standards are much easier to adhere to now. So the text label always has to be there, but you can also make it visible in the design and it's accessible by default. This is a lesson to be learned by people who want minimalist UIs.
MomsAVoxell 7mo ago
It should be noted that the example given by the OP contains ‘poor’ icons which are more a consequence of the nature of the source - i.e. a HR headshot does not an effective workflow make ..
catlifeonmars 7mo ago
I took away from the article that I should probably get rid of icons in data tables. I think the reference to Norman Nielsen was confusing. At the end of the article the author likens icons to visual speed bumps in a data table. The implication being to avoid them or at the very least use sparingly.
jfengel 7mo ago
The problem for me is when an icon is repeated many times on a page, such as once per row. The word quickly becomes redundant, and the repetition looks ugly. Tables are supposed to be information-dense and wasting screen real estate interferes with the user's task. I haven't found a good general solution to that. Hover doesn't work on mobile. A legend map is hard to locate. "Expert mode" introduces new problems. Sometimes I'll just use an unlabeled button and make whatever it is undoable, so that users can just click and discover. But that's hostile to completely new users.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

uhoh-itsmaciek 7mo ago

Stop blogging on medium. I start to read your post and as I'm scrolling down the page, I get a full-page modal nagging me to subscribe. Why should I listen to anything you have to say about user experience?

dmix 7mo ago
If you sign up for free those modals stop showing up.
- DangitBobby 7mo ago
  Yeah! Nag success!
- nofriend 7mo ago
  ub0 with all the annoyances lists on also hides it
- renewiltord 7mo ago
  Anyone who accepts such pattern on read-only website is not authority on UX any longer. It is like security expert who tells you to use same password everywhere. “If you use TOTP with it, you will be quite safe”. Yes, but recommendation reveals lack of knowledge .
- pimlottc 7mo ago
  Closing the window prevents them as well
ctward 7mo ago
Valid point. Should I stand up my own blog or should I use a different platform? What recommendations do you have?
- uhoh-itsmaciek 7mo ago
  No specific recommendations, sorry. Thanks for taking the feedback seriously, though, and good luck with finding a more reader-friendly platform.

halayli 7mo ago

I am not sure the author knows what spacial frequency means. Taking a well defined measurement unit and using it as an expression feels pretencious.

crazygringo 7mo ago

I literally can't tell what the author is arguing against or for. All the example table images seem fine, and have no captions saying whether they're supposed to be examples of good usage or bad usage. So either I have no idea what "bad" examples of icon usage are because the author doesn't show any, or the author thinks some or all of them are bad when, to me, the icon+text+color examples seem great (and one figure caption indicates icons+labels are best)? Yet the author continues to argue against icons and to use text instead? But never says whether icons+labels are actually better than just text, so we should use them in combination? I'm baffled. For an article arguing for greater clarity, the article itself couldn't be less clear.

pimlottc 7mo ago
In-line images should almost always include a caption, especially in a "do this and not that" type of piece
ctward 7mo ago
Hey, author here, I'll attempt to clarify. In a data grid or table the relative cognitive load of the page is already very high. Adding iconography to the table body content is often unnecessary and increases visual noise, processing requirements, and generally reduces readability/scanability. I've always felt that icons in this context are a risk or liability instead of a strength. I decided to info dump my findings to my team then published it as an article. I probably could use a good editor to help me next time!
- crazygringo 7mo ago
  I think you need to show examples of this bad usage, then. Your first image has zero icons in the rows. It has album covers but those aren't icons. Your second and third images show very usage that combines text, color, and relatively standard icons like checkmarks, X's, or in-progress. These are good and if you're trying to suggest these reduce readability, scannability, or add noise, then I'm frankly baffled. Your third image also shows profile images, but again those are not icons. So what are you arguing against? I can't ever remember coming across icons in a datagrid that "added to the relative cognitive load". And if you're arguing against checkmarks or X's, I don't think your arguments hold up. But even with "real" icons -- like, I've seen icons to show if a software package is for Windows or Mac or Linux. If a row is a TV show or a movie. If it's one file or an archive. If there's a PDF file download attached. An alarm icon for something past due. But these all seem totally fine and helpful. They're generally linked to a major feature of the platform that everybody understands, and help scannability. Without clear examples of what you're arguing against, I'm frankly completely lost.

nineteen999 7mo ago

Stop using Stop as a headline. Nobody with a brain is reacting to this (me excluded). Grow up.

krick 7mo ago

Start using icons in data tables! …What? I suppose, if the OP feels he can give you imperative commands, so can I. I'll spare you the pretentious text elaborating the command — it carries as much substance as no text at all, anyway. And, seriously, if you don't use icons in data tables, you should try and see how it feels. For me personally it's the magic trick that often makes all the difference between an unreadable wall of numbers and a vivid, crystal clear picture.

renewiltord 7mo ago

For comparison tables and dense information, overuse of detail is noise. Text is required to avoid a legend, and color is useful to distinguish among many, but icons add no distinction. This is not universal. The classic comparison involves only two icons: green box checked white and red x or red container crossed white. In this case text is unhelpful. I have never found text plus icon useful in a table that has colour.

zx8080 7mo ago

Stop showing fullscreen popups. Please. And no, medium is not the last site in the universe to host at.

moring 7mo ago
That was my first thought. A page that talks about cognitive load waits for you to start reading, then throws a newsletter sign-up dialog in your face? The irony... Oh, but it gets better: > We have been sold a lie that icons are the universal language of the modern interface. ... placed directly below a button bar that contains only icons.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

fainpul 7mo ago

I agree with the article. What the author doesn't answer is why we're seeing so many visually noisy tables. He seems to imply that designers don't know any better. There are two different "modes" of looking at a table. One is just "superficially glancing" (like you look at a picture), the other is more like reading, because you look for some specific piece of information. When glancing at a table, the one with more colors and icons looks more pleasing, while plain text looks boring. But when reading the table to get information out of it, the "boring" one (if it's well done) is probably more efficient and a better experience. And here is the problem: when presenting designs to stakeholders, 100% of stakeholders just glance at the table and always prefer the more colorful table with many icons — they don't realize that actual users, who need to get information from the table, would be better off with the "boring" table.

alanbernstein 7mo ago

Stop using email newsletter popups. Stop using images that I can't zoom in to.

trvz 7mo ago
Medium puts unlabelled icons above and below the article. When the author writes all this and puts it on there, he can't be taken seriously.

popcorncowboy 7mo ago

Is there a nitter equivalent for medium? I stopped clicking that domain years ago.

TonyStr 7mo ago

No, this is wrong. > When we pack high-density information into a data table or a complex dashboard we are increasing the visual entropy of the entire system. Forcing the brain to decode intricate, non-universal shapes in a tiny 16-pixel footprint, creates a “cognitive tax” that users pay en masse every time they scan the table. This is not how the brain processes icons. Icons have their meanings embedded through related patterns. If you rely on common icons such as x, checkmark, plus, shopping cart, arrows, three dots, etc. the user already associates certain meaning/behaviors with these icons (and will be surprised if they act differently in your application). Introducing new icons is more challenging, because you have to convey their meaning to the user. At no point does the user have to stare at an icon and try to "parse" it pixel-by-pixel. In all of OP's provided examples, the icons are supported by both labels and colors, which removes all ambiguity. You can argue that the icons are pointless in this case, but they certainly do not increase any cognitive load. Is it harder to identify a tiger than a lion, because his fur is covered in stripes?

evolighting 7mo ago

sounds like people are trying to reinvent hieroglyphs.

jFriedensreich 7mo ago

The same could be said for color, just to then go into detail that using color codes on too many columns and with unclear associations are the problem. This is just a weird way to frame an article. Colors and icons are indeed essential to quickly parse and use big amounts of tabular data. All the criticisms the author brings forward are specific problems of some implementations or just poor choices. All this is solved by putting a few key icons in their own column next to the text field they belong to, so users can hide and show them as needed depending on the task. I have eg. a basic indicator that is a red exclamation mark or yellow question mark or green checkmark and another one with a colored icon representation of a category field. Its 100 times easier to get a quick impression and find something than without those. if someone has a problem its 2 clicks to hide the columns, thats the universality of a table ui! Don’t let absolutist click bait articles fool you.