Newsgroups: comp.human-factors Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!prisoner From: prisoner@aix01.aix.rpi.edu (Allen S. Firstenberg) Subject: Re: Thing ICON Message-ID: Keywords: wanted - graphical representation for generic objects Nntp-Posting-Host: aix01srv.aix.rpi.edu References: <1991Jun17.111116.810@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> <1991Jun18.181536.14156@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 21 Jun 91 18:11:15 GMT Lines: 34 msp33327@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael S. Pereckas) writes: >In <1991Jun17.111116.810@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> George.Bray@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU (George Bray) writes: >>This is hardly intuitive! This is exactly the problem that occurs with _ANY_ interface, but is particularly obvious with GUIs - how do you know that your graphical icon will mean something to the user. The answer - as far as I can tell - is that you can't. >Has it occured to you to try using the word ``thing''? That only >makes sense if you speak English, but icons have a way of being >equally incomprehensible to everyone. Are there no words at all in >this interface? Only then would I get really worried about using an >actual word. Then why use graphical icons at all? (This is one thing that I dislike about graphically iconic word processors... when I'm typing, I like to see what I'm typing... not a bunch fo pictures.) Whats interesting about Iconic Standards is that they make little sense to anyone else. I've seen a "Standard Icon Set" developed in Germany that made almost no sense to me. Yet at the same time I was presented with information that said that the original recognition tests of the icons proved that most people (in Germany) could identify them. How many people would understand the Trashcan icon if they have never seen "Sesamee Street"?... {: -- UID = 5553, CCID = F8PG, ID = 6 I am just a number prisoner@rpi.edu "refs unpersons" prisoner@acm.rpi.edu --- 1984 prisoner@rpitsmts.bitnet