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From: ok@.cs.mu.oz (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: What to know & universal icons
Summary: arrows are not universal
Message-ID: <1977@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 30 Aug 89 08:33:17 GMT
References: <56543@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <19238@mimsy.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
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In article <19238@mimsy.UUCP>, don@brillig.umd.edu (Don Hopkins)
suggests a left-pointing arrow for "left", a right-pointing arrow for
"right", an upwards-pointing arrow for "up" or "forwards", and a
downwards-pointing arrow for "down" or "backwards".

(a) Real arrows are not a cultural universal.  There are thriving cultures
    which had never heard of them until European contact.
(b) The arrow signs are not very iconic.  A few decades ago, the arrow
    signs were better pictures: more like <--------<<.  This picture
    grossly exaggerates the arrow head, but at least it gets in the
    feathers, which are the important thing about an arrow.  A picture
    like <- is *extremely* abstract; if I hadn't been told that it stood
    for an arrow I would never have guessed.  (I had no such trouble with
    the older form.)  In any case, most Westerners these days seldom see
    real arrows.  <- looks more like a satellite antenna.
(c) It isn't just the up/forward and down/backward arrows which are
    ambiguous.  If you have a collection of icons being read from right
    to left, does the left-pointing arrow mean "in the same direction as
    you are reading" or "left"?  I recently had serious trouble with a
    direction sign which I understood to mean "forwards then up" but
    turned out to mean "forwards then right".  (The "forwards" part of
    the arrow in question was horizontal, pointing to my left, and the
    "right" part was vertical: ^    .)
                               |___

(d) There's another ambiguity:  does <- mean "left" or "west"?
    Bear in mind that 16th century maps used to be drawn with east at the top...