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From: burns@endor.uucp (John Burns)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Thing ICON
Keywords: wanted - graphical representation for generic objects
Message-ID: <7053@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 21 Jun 91 15:07:43 GMT
References: <1991Jun17.111116.810@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> <2040@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> <1991Jun20.214406.13733@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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George.Bray@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (George Bray) writes:
>One of the representations I need is for a THING, a generic object. At best,
>all I can think of is a hand coming out of a small wooden box, from the
>Addams Family TV series.  This is hardly intuitive!

Along the lines of the teapot someone suggested, how about an anvil, or
some similar picture of a heavy object with no moving parts?  I'm not quite
sure if you want to convey the idea of (a) mystery object, for which the
box with question mark might be best, (b) non-descript object, for which my
idea is designed (or possibly just the blank box, as someone else
mentioned), or (c) non-descript program, for which the hand-in-box might be
best as it is a more active symbol.

John A. Burns (burns@thurifer.harvard.edu, burns@huche1.bitnet)