Re: [Usability] Re: close icon is misleading

[Rodney Dawes <dobey free fr>]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 10:46, Dan Zlotnikov wrote:
> Would you please cite some support for that claim? I've done work
> on icons, and the problem is that in theory, icons are interpreted
> faster, and are cross-lingual. That advantage breaks down spectacularly when
> inappropriate icons are selected, inappropriate metaphors are used (and
> that is all too prevalent in the computer world), or a complex concept
> must be presented. Care to come up with an icon for "create new
> template"?

What is a "template"? :)

> Precisely; and the problem of finding an appropriate icon, one that will
> be appropriate to *all* levels of technical expertise, as well as *all*
> cultures and social context is far from trivial.

Nobody said it was trivial. We just said most of the current ones suck.
Read on. :)

> We could, possibly, find a solution to this one question, but it's just
> an indication of a much larger problem -- icons cannot easily be used to
> present complex information structures.

Icons can easily be used to present a simple view of a complex structure
in a visual sense. The hard part is just coming up with one that makes
enough sense to use. With so many languages to deal with (and so many
meanings for each word, in each language), it's really hard to make one
single icon that transcends the language barrier and explains the needed
information. Perhaps images should be "translated" also. Then we would
have different versions of images, for different languages, and the
proper metaphors and contexts could be used, without the issue of trying
to translate it, while using the same image.

-- dobey