Stop using unlabeled icons in data tables.
It says, "Norman Nielson argues that text + icon has the highest cognitive recall and lowest error rate"
Here's what the Nielsen Norman Group says about Icon Usability: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/
The conclusion: "Always include a visible text label. As Bruce Tognazzini once said, 'a word is worth a thousand pictures.'"
Here's the quote in context: https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html
"In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group took on the motto 'A word is worth a thousand pictures.' This still holds true."
I was wondering... is OP in fact saying it should be just words, without the icons next to them? Which is an opinion you could have, I think it's not entirely unreasonable (although as you say Nielson contradicts), but I wasn't entirely confident it is the point OP is making... or are they just talking about unlabelled icons (few if any? I'm not sure?) in those screenshots?
I still am not totally sure what OP is arguing.
I agree icons are not always the best option, but I'd need better arguments (and bad examples) than this to stop using them altogether.
As computer OSes became globalized, i18n and l10n began to demand that we abandon English words to describe GUI actions. I believe this was the correct decision.
So I viewed icons+text in a GUI as transitional, a learning period. I learned to recognize the icons for what they represent, the skeumorphism of it all, while the icons plus text were displayed on my screen (I mostly used Ubuntu and KDE.)
When the time was right, I toggled the setting to remove the text altogether. I was ready to spread my wings and fly through an icon-rich UX that no longer relied on words or text to convey rich meanings.
Now this means that I can make mistakes or I need to experiment in terms of "What does THIS button do?!" in order to learn new icon vocabulary. But I definitely prefer it now to the English text, and really if anyone uses a modern device proficiently, they've picked up a decent vocabulary for this already.
Many people neglect to take into account that, for example, an app in an app store is represented more strongly by its chosen icon and branding than its title! Google Play lets us search by name, but that is not very efficient when I'm searching for a particular icon by description!
It also presents challenges to verbal tech support, whether by phone, by Meet, or over the shoulder, because how do you describe graphical icons and gestures? How to translate them back into English words? UI/UX designers have a hidden vocabulary for controls and widgets that aren't common knowledge, but can really enhance understanding once we can name them the same way the pros do.
Yes, icons can be used badly. Yes, people who are still learning may lean on text labels too. But graphical UIs are mature and we all need to acquire a vocabulary for these, so that information is conveyed across national and linguistic barriers.
we translated them, e.g. the version of Windows 3.x that I used as a child had German words next to the icons.
Except, some icons didn't. I remember being really confused why I had to click on a picture of a frying pan for "search".
Or we could just translate the text?
Colors and pictures aren’t exactly free of cultural baggage, either.
Your "app" icon says nothing about the code quality of your app and coming with such ideas: " the user will press the icons to see what they do" means: uninstalling.
"Do you want to delete all your files ? [Yes] Remind me later[]"
I haven't found a good general solution to that. Hover doesn't work on mobile. A legend map is hard to locate. "Expert mode" introduces new problems.
Sometimes I'll just use an unlabeled button and make whatever it is undoable, so that users can just click and discover. But that's hostile to completely new users.
I think the reference to Norman Nielsen was confusing. At the end of the article the author likens icons to visual speed bumps in a data table. The implication being to avoid them or at the very least use sparingly.
This is a lesson to be learned by people who want minimalist UIs.
All the example table images seem fine, and have no captions saying whether they're supposed to be examples of good usage or bad usage.
So either I have no idea what "bad" examples of icon usage are because the author doesn't show any, or the author thinks some or all of them are bad when, to me, the icon+text+color examples seem great (and one figure caption indicates icons+labels are best)?
Yet the author continues to argue against icons and to use text instead? But never says whether icons+labels are actually better than just text, so we should use them in combination?
I'm baffled. For an article arguing for greater clarity, the article itself couldn't be less clear.
What if it's an icon with a simple shape? How does that compare to noising up the table with long phrases and repetitive words? Is the cognitive tax if icons a lot higher or just a little higher? What if it's an app where the user will be using it for hours, so they'll quickly learn what the icons mean and will appreciate the space they save?
Is a tick icon really that big a deal in place of "Task completed"? Or a pencil instead of "Edit"? Sometimes you don't have a choice because of lack of space too. There's always tradeoffs to make. Obviously try to avoid icons that are hard to guess though but sometimes that's not always possible.
I can't say I've ever felt tired looking at icons in a table, but when designing I have had the experience of replacing wordy repetitive text with some intuitive icons in a complex table and it suddenly looking less intimidating.
And I'm fine with a bit of cognitive exploration to figure out a green check and red X scheme rather than see a whole table column filled up with words like "active" and "inactive". The former allows more columns on screen at once. Horizontal scrolling is a worse impediment to assimilating information from a table.
Personally, my brain "page faults" whenever it has to interpret an emoji, which makes most use of in-line icons far worse than the text they represent. I expect few people have this problem, but I also expect that I'm not the only one with it.
Imagine for example a set of icons that are monochrome, open-ended glyphs comprised of a single stroke with line weight similar to that of the text. This could complicate visual parsing greatly due to high visual similarity to text.
On the other hand, a 16px checkbox control with subtle gradients, shadows, and depth cues looks absolutely nothing like text and is filtered out by the brain almost automatically (unless of course the checkbox state is pertinent to the user's intent). Same goes for a 16px colorful icon with shading like used to be ubiquitous in desktop operating systems.
Not sure how this is for accessibility in terms of colour selection, but I’m sure this could be fine-tuned.
The key problem is that most contemporary web design does not follow any idioms. Idioms are conventions of design that are universally understood. Skillful use of idioms makes it much easier to parse what is going on on a given page.
Where we are with most applications is that they try to define their own idioms, i.e. their own icons, their own navigation patterns, etc. But this is very arrogant because they're assuming that the user has the time to build that familiarity with all those idioms. This is never the case.
Every day I use web applications from nominally mature companies, and they have totally different icon sets for the same actions. This is immensely distracting and hard to read. Every company sees an opportunity to define their own icons, when what they should be doing is using the exact same ones as everyone else because that makes it easy to understand.
https://essays.johnloeber.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-desig...
It is like security expert who tells you to use same password everywhere. “If you use TOTP with it, you will be quite safe”. Yes, but recommendation reveals lack of knowledge .
…What? I suppose, if the OP feels he can give you imperative commands, so can I. I'll spare you the pretentious text elaborating the command — it carries as much substance as no text at all, anyway. And, seriously, if you don't use icons in data tables, you should try and see how it feels. For me personally it's the magic trick that often makes all the difference between an unreadable wall of numbers and a vivid, crystal clear picture.
And wouldn't colors be just as helpful?
Anyway, they should design for the majority. Or use some configurable approach, like with CSS, to make everybody happy. Opinionated is so last year.
Nobody with a brain is reacting to this (me excluded).
Grow up.
I imagine this could similarly be an issue with screen readers, but haven't tested it.
I have never found text plus icon useful in a table that has colour.
And no, medium is not the last site in the universe to host at.
For actual data work, any sort of "rich formatting" is no bueno and icons are great for quick reflexive categorization for information-dense habitually used interfaces. They just take a slightly slower learning curve.