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From: ravi@hcr.UUCP (Ravi Pandya)
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: ICONS: Passing Fad or New Found Wisdom?
Message-ID: <441@hcr.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Jun-83 16:52:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: hcr.441
Posted: Sun Jun 26 16:52:34 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jun-83 17:45:29 EDT
References: <2434@sri-arpa.UUCP>, <715@utcsstat.UUCP>, <440@hcr.UUCP>
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 72

I have some more detailed comments on the use of icons that didn't get into
my previous article because I was more concerned with the issues that Laura
raised.  So, for what they're worth, here are my thoughts on the issue.

A - I am quite pleased to see the use of icons and other visual techniques
in computer systems, and I certainly hope (and think) it will continue, for
a couple of reasons.  To begin, I think that because computers have been
communicating using a medium that is highly abstract and symbolized (print)
they have been limited in their usage to those who are willing to take the
time required to master the many inconsistent, illogical, and complex symbol
systems that software designers have seen fit to inflict upon their "lusers"
(that term itself holds a wealth of information about why things are as they
are).  Thus, many people have been unable to take advantage of the
"augmentation of the intellect" (to use Engelbart's term) that a
well-designed computer system can bestow upon its user, and have been
wasting much time with less efficient media; on the other hand, those who
have taken the time to learn such systems have been wasting much time
fighting with systems that were, in many cases, actively preventing them
from doing what they wanted to do.  I also think that computer science has
suffered greatly from its incestuous nature (e.g.  computer systems are
designed by computer scientists for the use of other computer scientists who
are designing computer systems) in the development of some rather gross
mutations (for an excellent example, take a close and critical look at C
some day and ask yourself if it can be anything else but a rather virulent
form of conceptual cancer), and the rise in the use of graphical and visual
techniques may provide some cross-fertilization from the very different,
lively, and creative field of graphic design (as well as other related
areas).

B, C - The cuteness of which you speak is frequently a result of
poorly-designed iconic systems -- the concept of "shift lock" has in fact
little to do with a picture of a lock, and so the process of establishing a
connection is closer to figuring out the punch line of a joke than
understanding a piece of visual communication.  Effective visual
communication is not "cute", it simply gets the message across cleanly and
quickly.

D - Standards are a rather moot point.  I would inevitably pick a
creatively, effectively designed system over one that rigidly follows a
standard that is a mediocre compromise (as standards tend to be).  I think
that encouraging good design is more important than establishing a standard,
but the latter at least avoids having to learn seventeen different mediocre
systems -- with a standard, you only have to learn one mediocre system (and
with a good system, you hardly need to learn it at all -- it meshes with the
way you think so well that the boundary between you and the system
disappears entirely).

E - For guidelines on the use of icons, a good source is the
well-established body of knowledge in the graphic arts.  Icons, because they
operate below the symbolic (linguistic) level, are appropriate when they
represent a package of concepts that can be grasped almost intuitively
without having to really "think" about them at all.  So using an icon in the
middle of a sentence of words (like those oh-so-cute children's books) is a
very ineffective way to communicate, as you have to make a connection
between two widely separated modes of understanding.  Icons *can* be arranged
in structural relationships as words can, but only when the relationships
can also be expressed in a simple, graphic, and visual manner -- a
dependency network, for example.

F - My idea of guiding principles for the use of icons, other than those
above, are the same as for the design of any interactive system: solve the
most general problem in a way that gives the user the most power with the
least conceptual clutter; if you do this, and don't let your design be
limited by short-sighted concerns about "efficiency", you can usually create
something for which there exists an elegant, general, and very efficient
algorithm.  You thus end up with a much, much better system and pay a small
price in "efficiency" for a large gain in effectiveness.

Well, I guess it's time to get off the soapbox now.  Good luck.
	--ravi

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