[nerdjon]

It looks cool, this is not a critique of your work just something I have noticed about myself and curious if others have.

I don't know why but I have long struggled with using icons to mark a task. There are certain ones that are so engrained like a floppy disk to save, a plus mark for a new tab, reload symbol, home symbol, or other very obvious ones. Or ones that are just the logo for a brand, those are easy to remember.

But especially as we moved away from skeuomorphism (which thankfully bits and pieces of it are combing back, without it being bashed over the head with, like with the apple pencil UI) this got a lot harder for me.

And I see this, and and I just know that I am going to have to look at all 6 going in a circle to find the one I want every time.

I experienced this recently where I wanted to put a Shortcut (from the Mac App) on my toolbar in finder. My only option is to show icon only, text only, or both. I can't say, I want to have both for some things.

I am curious if anyone else has struggle with symbols. Basically it seems like for me, the only symbols I remember are the ones that are so obvious (I guess) that it couldn't possible be something else. Or its universal across most/all apps. Even apps that I use daily, if its a symbol unique to that app I am still going to go top to bottom or left to right mousing over until I find the one I am looking for.

[KaiMagnus]

No, you're most certainly not alone. Very few icons are intuitively understandable, although even the folks at Nielsen Norman have trouble backing that up with data (as linked below).

What immediately came to my mind was Autodesk Maya, where they have similar menus that use text only labels (see the screenshot from their manual). They have a lot of very abstract and complicated features, so every bit of usability counts.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-8B...

[xtacy]

You are not alone, me too, and several others have noted it and discussed it before. For e.g., Gmail made this change that I absolutely hated and instantly disabled when it was released: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/15291/are-grayscale-b... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17038130

The grumpy.website linked above is gold!

[HeckFeck]

Agreed. Add colour and/or text to this pie menu and it is perfect.

The most well-known implementation of the concept was in the Sims 1, where actions for the active sim were clearly labelled. The menu was a nest of unlimited depth. Good to see someone bring it to the desktop, but it would be better if it were more like its forbearer.

[jandrese]

The design fad of ultra-minimalism has set UI development back years. Non-visible controls, exceedingly vague iconography, elimination of the distinction between control and content, and more are all symptoms of developers chasing the trend without thinking about how people actually use their products. Plus back in the day people just put more effort into designing icons. Can you imagine Susan Kare putting a hamburger menu button on something? It's laughable. A complete iconography fail and yet you see it absolutely everywhere these days.

[ppbjj]

Similar thoughts. I use a few of the apps listed on the site frequently and this would take me awhile to master. Super cool idea though.