[DeathRay2K]

I changed the UX in my mobile app from text only to icon + text by default in menus, buttons, and links.

There are several reasons I made the switch, but the primary reason is that it makes it easier to build a kind of muscle memory for navigating and performing particular actions. In essence, the text is there for new users and the icons are there for experienced users.

[marginalia_nu]

It's kind of a shame how we keep trying to make icons look uniform, either in color, or in shape.

Like I open the app drawer on my Android phone and there are like 16 different icons, all different Google apps, all are round and various abstract configurations of the same exact four colors.

Feels like we're falling into the same trap that Gothic handwriting did with the minims. Yeah it looks very pretty but it's almost completely illegible since we've taken away all the things that help set icons apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/Fi...

[mook]

Yeah, I learned that using Netscape 6 with a row of blue balls for icons; going from the older Mozilla builds with the Netscape 4-style icons it was a definite downgrade. Pheonix had a row of orange balls; they later switched to IE-style icons with distinct shapes, which was better.

The recent Android releases where everything is a squircle really sucks too.

[lavataco]

Google has been universally panned for using their logos as app icons. I think most people in this thread are talking about UI vs app icons (essentially avatars for apps at this point).

[marginalia_nu]

Visually uniformity is a broad trend that affects both areas. The monochrome line-art UI icons that are used everywhere are every bit as bad as Google's app icons.

Here are some icons I screenshotted off a website. I challenge you to tell me what they mean

http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons.png

http://www.marginalia.nu/junk/icons2.png

Hint: „ǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ ʎɹʇ„ sı dn oʇ ƃuıʇuıod ʍoɹɹɐ ǝɥʇ puɐ „sǝsıɹdɹǝʇuǝ„ sı ǝqoʃƃ ǝɥ⊥

[TrianguloY]

This.

I like icons (and colors, but those are still mostly missing) to quickly find a frequent action. If the menu is always the same you can learn the position, but with dynamic entries it's way more difficult.

[nmilo]

+1. I love icons, just be consistent. That MacOS example is egregious

[concinds]

Other built-in Tahoe apps have more consistent indentations and far more icons. The Safari team (not the WebKit team, the people building the app wrapping it) just phoned it in with the menu icons. They also somehow disabled the Tahoe window opening animation.

[lavataco]

Yes, just consistently line them up and it would be fine. There’s plenty of UX research saying icon+label improves recognition and task speed. NN Group is a good resource for this.

[bromuro]

In my language “egregious” means “very good”. In English means both very good and very bad. What’s your meaning here? Just to be consistent :)

[1986]

In practice, "egregious" in English never means very good

[yakshaving_jgt]

This hasn't been my experience.

[itishappy]

It used to!

[spudlyo]

I think it used to just mean "singular", from the Latin grex, gregis meaning herd, and e/ex meaning "out of". It could mean singularly bad or singularly good I guess in English, but in Latin I think it had more of a connotation of exceptional, extraordinary, eminent.

[DonHopkins]

Literally. Oh wait, I mean not literally?

[macintux]

Arguably.

[itishappy]

I feel like shortcuts are often enough. They function quite like this: a symbolic language that allows you to build up an intuition. They use icons that you already know, and instead of being bespoke per designer (how many different save icons are there?) they work across your entire OS. The muscle memory you build, instead of being bespoke per menu (and dynamic in time), allows you to skip the menu entirely!

[maxloh]

Exactly. Reading a line of text is a lot slower than recognizing an icon. Those icons are for power users who are really familiar with the app.

[petepete]

This is true when you know what you're looking for, the icons are distinct and you have good eyesight.