Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsof!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekecs!orca!brucec From: brucec@orca.UUCP Newsgroups: net.works Subject: RE: ICONS: Passing Fad or New Found Wisdom? Message-ID: <1377@orca.UUCP> Date: Thu, 7-Jul-83 12:08:11 EDT Article-I.D.: orca.1377 Posted: Thu Jul 7 12:08:11 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 8-Jul-83 13:56:39 EDT Lines: 107 IN-REPLY-TO: Vongehren@OFFICE-12 Wed Jun 22 00:50:00 1983 Subject: ICONS: Passing Fad or New Found Wisdom? I meant to write this article and get it out to the net some time ago, but got caught up in work, and completely forgot that I intended to do it. Since this is a subject about which I have strong feelings, and since it relates to the work that I do, I decided "better late than never," and went ahead to write this. A - Do you think that the current interest in the use of icons on terminals and computer displays is just a passing fad? No. The purpose of icons is to increase the bandwidth of the information channel from a computer to a user. It is a well-established principle that people can recognize relatively abstract geometric symbols faster than clusters of words in a language they can read. That's not to say that the recognition of an icon can't be aided, especially for new users of a system, by one well chosen caption word. It seems to be the time in cmprehending multiple words as phrases that slows down the recognition of written symbols. The experienced user can easily ignore a caption, or even recognize it as part of the abstract shape of the icon rather than a word (I doubt you perceive the writing on a stop sign as a word after years of driving). I make no claim that icons can or should be "instantly recognizable" in any sense without a period of training in recognition of the icons in use on a system. I do claim that once trained, a user can operate faster using familiar icons than text. B - Aren't some of the current 'graphics' just a little too 'cute' e.g. IBM upper-case 'lock'. Is this just a sign of an immature field? Will the marketplace tolerate this long enough for growth and maturity to occur? I agree that there seems to be more marketing than cognitive psychology in the design of a lot of icons. Oh, well, it doesn't really hurt anything but the feelings of people who want this field to be taken seriously. The real questions in the design of icons are distinguishability between different icons on a given system, and size and complexity of shape. Even the cutest icon becomes just a shape to be recognized after enough use (as an experiment, try writing the word "thrash" down on paper and staring at it for a while. Pretty soon, it stops looking like a word.). C - What must happen for this field to mature? I don't see anything that will stop it from maturing. For the market to take thsi form of interface seriously, it has to become easily available (i.e. cheap), and easily usable (i.e. fast). The economics of the microcomuter industry guarantee that this will happen, as more powerful hardware gets cheaper, and as more powerful operatin systems become more common. As long as there is a paradigm held in front of the vendors in the marketplace, giving the less inovative of them a model to copy, then progress will continue. As flawed as I think the Xerox Star and Appple Lisa are, they have provided such paradigms. Enough vendors are working on copies or extensions of these models that I think the field has the critical mass to keep going. D - Standardization of Signs and Symbols has occurred in other fields, e.g. Traffic. Is there any effort to standardize within the computer field? Should this be done? Having been involved in the standards process in the computer field, I can truthfully say that everyone wants a standard - his own. The field of iconic interfaces is too new for standards to be desirable, since we don't yet know what we want. It's probably best to leave things alone until something like a de facto standard arises. E - Are there any obvious indicators for when it is inappropriate to use an icon in place of a word? Clearly there is amaximum number of distinguishable icons in a system, depending on the criteria used for desired speed of recognition. The less often an icon is used, the less recognizable it is. So sometimes it's better to use a word or two than an icon that the user has never seen before. Icons can be ambiguous in some circumstances, so for communication requiring great precision (error messages from the computer fro instance) icons are not desirable. And I for one would rather see a text string saying "the building is on fire" than a little picture of a house with flames coming out. F - What would you offer as guiding principles for the use of icons in computer displays? Will these differ for icon use on keyboards? I can't offer any guiding principles since I haven't yet gone through the cycle of designing and testing the effect of a set of icons. I will point out that the legends on a keyboard necessarily have a different look from the icons on a display screen, due to the difference betweem reflective and luminant shades, the texture of the surfaces, and the lower resolution of the key legend. This means that key legends must be more cartoon-like (hard edges, high contrast, etc.) than screen icons. To date, most of the icons I've seen on screens have been cartoon-like, possibly with some use of gray scale half-toning. I suspect that this is more a lack of imagination than a basic limitation of the technique. Bruce Cohen UUCP: ...!teklabs!tekecs!brucec CSNET: tekecs!brucec@tektronix ARPA: tekecs!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay