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From: craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: What to know & universal icons
Message-ID: <1989Sep3.055622.28387@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Date: 3 Sep 89 09:56:22 GMT
References: <768@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <3490@rtech.rtech.com> <1316@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <56868@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <KIRAVUO.89Aug31115445@kampi.hut.fi>
Reply-To: craig@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Craig Hubley)
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services
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Unfortunately, icons drawn from universal, physical, things tend to be very
concrete, while the kinds of things we presently do with computers tend to
very abstract.  At the very least, they are verbs, which require demonstration,
which requires expression over time, which is not the strong point of icons.
In Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", one of his satires describes a society of
intellectuals who speak to each other with objects, and as a result have to
carry a lot of them around in bags on their backs.  They don't get much done.

Of course it is very difficult also to find reliable universals.  I rather
like the idea of facial expressions, but beyond that, when we get into 
gestures, and especially cultural dependencies like clocks and mailboxes,
we get into trouble.

What if there was already a quite large, totally standardized, universal body
of icons that was guaranteed to uniquely and unambiguously identify any
abstract term or verb we needed?  What if it were also possible to form
'icon sentences', again in a relatively standard way, that could be
interpreted as actions, statements, or instructions ?  What if one-quarter of
the world's population already knew it ?

Well, it does exist and it's called Chinese.  Yes, I know it's been said
before, but I for one would be *very glad* to learn Chinese characters, which
in fact only has to be done once per lifetime, than learn a dozen stupid icons
every time I fire up a new Mac, Sun, or NeXT application.  The fact is, it's
*easier* to learn Chinese than do this again, over and over, dozens of times.

Of course, this is more like the midway point between what we understand icons
to be, and what we understand written language to be.  Perhaps the Chinese 
will ultimately adapt better to these ideas, as the Japanese seem already
to be doing.

However, there is one problem.  The Chinese characters are used extensively
in some other languages, most notably Japanese, and don't always keep their
original meanings.  Furthermore, in China and Japan these characters would
be recognized as text and would need to be set off or outlined in some way
to distinguish them as control labels.  All the same, it seems a quite
supportable approach.

However, I think ultimately an icon will have to very directly capture
the operation it symbolizes.  If an icon is going to *shrink* something,
I want to see a simple object *before* and *after* the operation in the
icon, perhaps in different colors.  So I see a big square in red on top
of a smaller square in blue.  For *copy*, I see two red circles on top
of one blue circle.  This helps to alleviate the problem of having to
demonstrate the action, though of course ultimately that could be done too.

    Craig Hubley			-------------------------------------
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    Craig Hubley			-------------------------------------
    Craig Hubley & Associates		"Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
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