It really depends. If it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t, like everything else.
But I do feel like he’s hurting his case here:
> You know what would be a fun game? Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.
That’s an excellent example of how effective icons actually are! I can mostly read that menu at a glance with no text lables, because good use of iconography doesn’t assign “arbitrary” icons to options, jt fields well-known icons that are easily recognizeable. Take for instance the ‘save’ icon - everybody knows what the floppy disc means, even if they have never seen, touched, or used a floppy disc IRL. A 15 year old born in 2010 knows what the ‘save’ icon is. My nearly 70 year old mother knows what the ‘share’ curly arrow icon means.
They’re not arbitrary at this point - they’re standard.
But I do feel like he’s hurting his case here:
> You know what would be a fun game? Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.
That’s an excellent example of how effective icons actually are! I can mostly read that menu at a glance with no text lables, because good use of iconography doesn’t assign “arbitrary” icons to options, jt fields well-known icons that are easily recognizeable. Take for instance the ‘save’ icon - everybody knows what the floppy disc means, even if they have never seen, touched, or used a floppy disc IRL. A 15 year old born in 2010 knows what the ‘save’ icon is. My nearly 70 year old mother knows what the ‘share’ curly arrow icon means.
They’re not arbitrary at this point - they’re standard.