I think this article misses a couple important points when it comes to UI AND UX.
I'd argue that an important element of UI is discoverability. Yes, a "A box with downward arrow" is not in and of itself enlightening about what it does. By looking at that icon I am not sure what it does. However, I can discover what it does in very few actions. Clicking on it results in selecting all the emails on the page, and the box changes to checked. Clicking the down icon results in a selection menu with "All", "None", "Read", "Unread" and "Starred"[0]. Clicking on one of those items selects only those items. Given that interaction, can anyone here say they still don't understand what it does? My one criticism is that selecting something like "stared" doesn't filter down to only those items too, so you can now select things that aren't on the page of items you're currently seeing.
Apple's original iOS did not convey a sense of "immediate understanding" that this article demands, but rather focused on discoverability. That is the same mentality that went into make this UI/UX. My point is you can't judge one without the other. Removing all animations from the original iOS would have come close to ruining it. Showing a picture of a Google UI, and criticizing it without allowing it the benefit of discoverability is tantamount to the same lack of context as removing those animations.
Also, following this posts advice:
> Luckily, this menu can be switched to text labels in Settings.
And changing to text button labels[1] doesn't even change that first icon[2], so I'm not sure that post is really for any other purpose than creating material for some echo chamber.
I'm afraid to click buttons in mobile apps and web pages now. At one point, there was a standardized method, known as "Undo", to assure the user that the changes they're making can be reverted, but at some point along the way we ditched that concept. It's especially worse on mobile where tooltips don't exist, and I have to just have to tap randomly on an icon that looks vaguely like what I want, and pray that I'm doing the right thing.
If I'm lucky, there will be a limited-time Undo button after doing the action (GMail has this on some actions but not others!), but if I hesitate too long or accidentally click on anything but it, it goes away permanently. I'm sure I've lost some important email to the depth of time because of a few fatfinger mistaps.
The other thing missing in mobile is the hover event which would bring up a tooltip. Maybe future advanced screens will recognize a literal hover over the button as a trigger for a tooltip, or we'll get an annotate mode for the icons.
I feel like 3D touch is all the hardware you need... it just isn't used that way.
A 'peek' already provides a preview of an item -- it just isn't used for action buttons. 'Peeking' into the name and description of an icon would be a fairly straightforward extension of the idea.
How common was undo really? I don't remember undo functionality being anywhere except in content editor applications like word processors, and that's still the case today.
What isn't a content editor application? Word has it. Paint has it. Outlook has it. Windows Explorer (the file manager) has it. It's universal across Windows and Mac OSes and as universal as anything can be on linux.
Well, anything that isn't a text/content editor (or a file system manager, which I had forgotten to mention), so basically the vast majority of computer usage. Settings in applications, navigation state of applications, state of the OS/window manager itself (I'm not aware of a desktop environment where moving or closing a window or application supports an undo feature), etc. Web browsers and most file managers do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo."
The comment I was initially replying to talked about being afraid to press buttons in modern UIs because of the lack of undo. My claim is that, except for buttons that change formatting in text/content editors or buttons that make changes in some file system managers, undo functionality has really never existed to my knowledge.
> Web browsers (...) do support back and forward navigation, if you want to count that as "undo."
Not in practice, as this feature is universally broken by modern web developers, making it totally unreliable.
You have a good point about undo - it was universally a feature for reverting operations on edited data, not on application state itself. But then again, it was compensated by buttons having reliable tooltips, and most options available in textual menus.
Except undoing "Archive" is a feature that gmail has had for as long as I remember, and it is exposed to you by an immediate notification after you have archived it.
What I am less confident of is what happens when that notification goes away.
>I'd argue that an important element of UI is discoverability
The whole point of icons is that you don't need to "discover" what they do. They're supposed to be intuitive.
To me an arrow pointing down means "download," not "select all."
If you can't convey your meaning inside a 16x16px monochrome block, then perhaps that's not the best choice for the task at hand.
Time to innovate.
Also, Google's choice to deviate from every other mobile menu icon on the planet (the hamburger menu) is a sign of hubris, not an effort to help the customer.
I still remember once upon a time ome could long press icons/buttons and the hover text would appear. But oh well, it seems we are too far ahead in the future now.
Cut is a really terrible example though, because the entire naming of the 'cut' operation isn't intuitive. "Cut" is really "relocate-object-action-first-half" and "paste" is really "relocate-object-action-second-half". We don't have good words for that. The entire relocation object involves program state and that adds some extra complexity.
Cut has a whole heap of connotations that don't relate to the editing "cut" operation. Google suggests incision, wound, to separate into parts, "remove (something) from something larger by using a sharp implement". Editing cut doesn't do any of this.
There is a very specific link in that relocating text /could be/ thought of as snipping it off a page and pasting it somewhere else, except no-one would ever do that when writing seriously. They erase and rewrite.
So the scissors icon links to the word cut, but cut itself is actually a mystery-meat operation where figuring it out is hard for users that aren't already savvy with interfaces. By extension, the scissors icon has no link to the actual operation that the button performs.
Cut and Paste is really the same as cutting out a shape in construction paper and pasting it elsewhere. Its gone from its original location and can be put in a new one. The only place the metaphor fails is that you can paste multiple times.
In image programs there is literally a white gap where to object was. Word processors would redo line breaks and hide the original location.
I would argue they most of those are only intuitive from long use, and were no more obvious than three bars when introduced (though they were easy to learn and quicker to recognize than text, just like the menu convention.)
In a few years, three bars will be just as intuitive to most users, and probably be the intuitive icon we use as a reference when complaining that the icon to switch on ranged machine-brain interaction instead of touch interface isn't as intuitive as established iconography.
Those are all icons that seem intuitive because they're consistently used for that for about as long as you're alive. They're all metaphors for what office workers in 60s-80s did. If you worked in a corporate office then, you might have had a shot at guessing the meaning correctly. Otherwise, they're just as arbitrary as hamburger menus.
> Copyboard for paste.
I don't even know what on Earth is a "copyboard". Is this some arcane tool from early XX-century newspaper office?
The first Windows I used, 3.11, had a built-in tutorial explaining all the weird stuff, including helping you become comfortable with using your mouse.
I miss the days when software people cared about built-in user guides.
> No icon anywhere is intuitive. They're all learned.
Absolutely not true.
The word "icon" originated with religious artwork and was used to tell stories to the people at a time when 99% of the population was illiterate.
Governments spend millions of dollars on research to design important icons that will be completely intuitive for hundreds or thousands of years. Things like the radioactive trefoil, or the biohazard sign. (Google it, there's lots of articles about this.)
Nobody wants to tell some future human, "Oh, sorry you sank into a 4,000-year-old pool of radioactive sludge and died. You should have "learned" it was dangerous ahead of time. At least you "discovered" what it means, now that you're dead."
The icons are used as elements to tell stories, because people already learned what the icons mean. No one intuitively knows that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
> millions of dollars on research to design important icons that will be completely intuitive for hundreds or thousands of years.
> Nobody wants to tell some future human, "Oh, sorry you sank into a 4,000-year-old pool of radioactive sludge and died. You should have "learned" it was dangerous ahead of time. At least you "discovered" what it means, now that you're dead."
Of course not. They tell some future human: "I'm glad you stayed out of that pool. It's great that you learned what the skull+crossbones
icon meant during your childhoold."
Eh, I’d say most Christian icons are not at all understandable without learning. After all, they’re mostly just portraits of people (Jesus, Mary, saints, etc.) looking at the camera, rather than depicting any particular event in their lives, let alone trying to provide a broader explanation of why they’re important or worth venerating. Apparently there was an elaborate system of symbolism, especially in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, with everything from specific colors of clothing to hand gestures having various meanings – but you have to already know those meanings in order to understand the symbols.
Then you certainly know more about religious iconography than I do. Nevertheless, if you're going to make a claim as extreme as saying that iconography doesn't (in the majority of cases, to a large extent) require prior understanding, you'd do better to make some sort of argument or cite some sort of evidence rather than merely asserting authority.
However, it may just be a misunderstanding. The quote that you said was "absolutely not true" had two statements:
> No icon anywhere is intuitive. They're all learned.
I'm not saying that symbols, found in religious icons or elsewhere, can't be "intuitive", in the sense that there's some underlying logic or they're otherwise easier to understand than a set of symbols picked at random. (That said, many of them, like the aforementioned Eastern Orthodox clothing colors, do seem fully arbitrary.) I'm just saying that they're also "learned", i.e. you can't (fully) make sense of them without prior understanding.
By the way, your mention of radioactivity reminds me of the US government's attempt to design markers for nuclear waste sites which can be understood many thousands of years into the future, without a common language – e.g. as described in this article:
This is an interesting problem precisely because it is hard to unambiguously convey abstract concepts using iconography without context – even a concept as simple as "this place is dangerous". Thus, the proposals end up being rather complex.
Here's Charles Baldwin [involved in developing the biohazard symbol] telling you the goals of the project:
> We wanted something that was memorable but meaningless, so we could educate people as to what it means.
And all the research into the latter problem? There'd be a whole lot less of it if the biohazard icon were intuitive.
Instead, in the context of the US Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, we have ideas like a scary looking 'Landscape of thorns' being shut down because interesting looking places could become tourist attractions, the idea of starting a religious tradition around the area being seriously considered, and the conclusion that, ultimately, there's no good solution.
Another thing is that once you _do_ discover what an icon means, it only takes a few repetitions before you start to remember.
I don't even use Gmail anymore (I've completely switched over to Inbox) but when I opened that article the first thing I did was "read" all the icons on the page. The only ones I had trouble with were "Mark as Read" and "Move to Folder", but even those only took a couple seconds of thought for me to comprehend.
I would probably mostly remember the relative position of the button. So next time when they would add something in-between I would click the third from the left and would be surprised that something else happened.
I have it the same even with labels, truth to be told. I hate that nowadays Google seems to shuffle All, Images, Videos, News around, because I learned that Images are always the second one and then it opens Videos on full moon and News on Wednesday. Now I have to always parse before I tap/click.
"I don't even use Gmail anymore (I've completely switched over to Inbox) but when I opened that article the first thing I did was "read" all the icons on the page."
Well, Inbox shares quite a few of these obscure icons (like the "stop sign with exclamation mark" icon for spam), only they captioned them.
So as an Inbox user you've basically seen the cheat sheet quite a few times. This sort of invalidates your test imho.
I'd argue that an important element of UI is discoverability. Yes, a "A box with downward arrow" is not in and of itself enlightening about what it does. By looking at that icon I am not sure what it does. However, I can discover what it does in very few actions. Clicking on it results in selecting all the emails on the page, and the box changes to checked. Clicking the down icon results in a selection menu with "All", "None", "Read", "Unread" and "Starred"[0]. Clicking on one of those items selects only those items. Given that interaction, can anyone here say they still don't understand what it does? My one criticism is that selecting something like "stared" doesn't filter down to only those items too, so you can now select things that aren't on the page of items you're currently seeing.
Apple's original iOS did not convey a sense of "immediate understanding" that this article demands, but rather focused on discoverability. That is the same mentality that went into make this UI/UX. My point is you can't judge one without the other. Removing all animations from the original iOS would have come close to ruining it. Showing a picture of a Google UI, and criticizing it without allowing it the benefit of discoverability is tantamount to the same lack of context as removing those animations.
Also, following this posts advice:
> Luckily, this menu can be switched to text labels in Settings.
And changing to text button labels[1] doesn't even change that first icon[2], so I'm not sure that post is really for any other purpose than creating material for some echo chamber.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/D8CogSS.png
[1] https://i.imgur.com/jOaTKDs.png
[2] https://i.imgur.com/tkhSoom.png