Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!prisoner
From: prisoner@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Allen S. Firstenberg)
Subject: Re: Thing ICON
Message-ID: <fm=l1-r@rpi.edu>
Keywords: wanted - graphical representation for generic objects
Nntp-Posting-Host: aix01srv.aix.rpi.edu
References: <1991Jun17.111116.810@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> <1991Jun18.181536.14156@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 21 Jun 91 18:11:15 GMT
Lines: 34

msp33327@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael S. Pereckas) writes:

>In <1991Jun17.111116.810@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> George.Bray@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (George Bray) writes:
>>This is hardly intuitive!

This is exactly the problem that occurs with _ANY_ interface, but is
particularly obvious with GUIs - how do you know that your graphical icon
will mean something to the user.

The answer - as far as I can tell - is that you can't.

>Has it occured to you to try using the word ``thing''?  That only
>makes sense if you speak English, but icons have a way of being
>equally incomprehensible to everyone.  Are there no words at all in
>this interface?  Only then would I get really worried about using an
>actual word.  

Then why use graphical icons at all?  (This is one thing that I dislike
about graphically iconic word processors... when I'm typing, I like to see
what I'm typing... not a bunch fo pictures.)

Whats interesting about Iconic Standards is that they make little sense to
anyone else.  I've seen a "Standard Icon Set" developed in Germany that made
almost no sense to me.  Yet at the same time I was presented with
information that said that the original recognition tests of the icons
proved that most people (in Germany) could identify them.

How many people would understand the Trashcan icon if they have never seen
"Sesamee Street"?... {:
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