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Re: Icon design
by Thomas Zander on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @04:55
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Hi usabilityDude;
I'm not new to usability and the only thing I know about is people facing left or right as well as moving things going left or right.
The things you point out are new to me, please tell us how you came to the above conclusion.
Cheers! |
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Re: Icon design
by UsabilityDude on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @11:17
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I will only say one thing: BeOS.
It had ALL its icons facing at the same direction. And this made a HUGE impression to its users, making them think that the system is actually easier to use, because the brain did not have to adjust itself to recognize shapes looking at different directions.
Usability for large sets of icons DICTATES that for consistency and for brain's ease-of-pattern-recognition, ALL its icons MUST face at the same direction.
The new Gnome effort is also doing the exact same thing. I hope the KDE dudes also listen and do it too.
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Re: Icon design
by molnarcs on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @12:18
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In my above reply I tried to remember where I saw icons that were aesthetically unpleasent and they looked like an army or something - and BANG! it was the BeOS screenshots I saw (I just didn't remember it).
"Usability for large sets of icons DICTATES that for consistency and for brain's ease-of-pattern-recognition, ALL its icons MUST face at the same direction."
I think this is a hoax - or at least it doesn't make any sense (but sounds good and it looks like as if it was something serious - it isn't). Capitalizing the keywords don't help it either :) Lets see:
- "for consistency:" this almosts amounts to tautolgy ... consistency with what? with each other? Because there are a lot of factors that are more important to make an icon set consistent: the color palette, the "theme" (in the sense of kids-icons, realistic-icons, whatnot), etc.
- "and for brain's ease-of-pattern-recognition," Again, what do you mean by that? Becaue it sounds cool and all, but there is no such thing as the brain's easy-of-pattern-recognition. Yes, the brain recognizes patterns (which appears to be acquired with and a function of language) - even where there are none I might add :) - but that doesn't necessarily help usability at all. It is much more important what the icons actually represent. The user should know at first glance what will be the result of clicking a particular icon, and whether all icons face the same direction or not doesn't help a bit in this.
- " because the brain did not have to adjust itself to recognize shapes looking at different directions." You largely underestimate the average brain. Your entire argument is a classic case of thinking of human beings as computer programs in the sense that you reduce the user to a set of functions - the brain's easy-of-pattern-recognition function - without taking into consideration just how complex the entire issue is. For instance, one might argue that "a slight variation in the direction icons look keeps the brain unconsciously alert" - I just couldn't make that argument with a straight face :))
Are you sure you didn't make that post with tongue in cheek (because then, I'm a victim of your humour :)))
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Re: Icon design
by UsabilityDude on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @14:36
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You are obviously an idiot. Icons of a given set must be consistent with each other. They do look better, they do look more welcoming, and they don't look like a FREAKING MESS.
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Re: Icon design
by Dolio on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @15:39
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You're probably going to have to do better than resorting to name-calling to get people to take your point seriously.
Try answering his actual points. Calling him an idiot is just a signal that you don't have actual data to back up your point of view.
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Re: Icon design
by molnarcs on Wednesday 16/Nov/2005, @16:36
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"You are obviously an idiot." Yeah, obviously.
You answered none of the points I raised, and your reaction is quite ironic in the light of your nickname and the fact that you're preaching usability.
I will try to describe my points more simply (I'm not an english speaker, so it might be difficult to understand me sometimes). So: whether an icon theme is consistent or not depends on many things, of which the direction they face is the least important. I refer you to my screenshot that I posted before. If you check out the 4 icons in the middle, odd one is obviously the kword icon - not because it leans in another direction, but because it has an entirely different color palette.
What you wrote as an explanation seems to be no more than good sounding but empty terms (brain-pattern-recognition...) and I eagerly awaiting your real answer to the points I raised concerning your techno babble.
My whole point is that icon direction is totally overrated. Yes, I can imagine certain circumstances when it is beneficial, or simply looks better (like mimetypes/folder icons) - but that doesn't mean that they are actually more usable or user friendly. In very simple terms, a variation in direction might help the users remember the distinctions between say scribus, openoffice or kword which have similar functionality (thus they'll have similar icons: see my example, there is pen and paper on each of them) but are completely different beasts in reality.
Your BeOS example fails on the point that, again, you overrate one aspect of the UI (all BeOS icons lean in the same direction) so much that you attribute the - admittedly legendary - usability of BeOS to this single factor. This is the least important factor in my opinion, and what's more, I haven't seen any solid evidence or theory behind your reasoning except the (silly) BeOS example and the fact that GNOME is doing it. Fine, and tango actually is not bad, but what makes it good is that it is less dull than the current GNOME icon theme - see the comparison on the project's page. And we know pretty well that the current icon theme was also the result of wild usability theories, which now seem to be discarded in favor of a new one (and I might add that what makes tango nice is that it is not very dissimilar to oxygen's less vibrant themes).
In short: if you come up with such a wild theory, and you keep shouting DO THIS BECOUSE USABILITY DICTATES IT, you better come up with some reasoning beside GNOME is doing it and BeOS ruled once. And don't call those who disagree with you idiots. Thanks.
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