[spaqin]

What should be viewed as more unique actually is how verbose North America is. Especially in the car part that I know of, watching car reviews online - road signs or even buttons in a vehicle that would be symbols in Europe or Asia are written out.

[Telaneo]

I remember being in some American cars and seeing quite a few buttons being labelled in plain English, while an equivalent European car would certainly have used various symbols on those buttons (think 'Fan' instead of a fan icon). I'd imagine in Europe this is done at least in large part to not have to translate all those buttons and swap them out for each market in Europe (or at least have untranslated buttons and such be reduced to a minimum). Meanwhile, an American car would have been made with an America First attitude, and adaptations pertinent to other markets wouldn't have been front of mind (it's not like this specific example would have been a problem in Canada for that matter). I haven't been in an American car in a while though, so I don't know if this trend still loves on. It's probably become irrelevant given the infotainment and such will have to be translated anyway.

[wodenokoto]

Aren't we (as an HN hivemind) always complaining that UI is removing text labels and leaving us with symbols only?

[Symbiote]

We complain about bad symbols, or symbols introduced without any explanation or time to learn them.

The symbols on a European car (TBH I've never noticed the difference in a hired American car) don't have this problem. They refer to real things, like lights and fans.

[Telaneo]

Symbols are hard. They can be done well. I don't think many would mind changing a 'call' button with a '[telephone receiver icon]' button, but those kinds of examples are probably in the minority.

[what]

> telephone receiver icon

It’s weird because no one has a phone that looks that way now. Does the younger generation even know that it’s a phone? Same with a lot of software iconography.

[Karliss]

I don't think it's much worse than having an icon of mobile phone from 90s with a grid of buttons and external antenna. Almost no one is using those either. And a featureless rectangle with rounded corners in the shape of modern smartphone doesn't make a good icon. The best you can do is rectangle with circle for pre iphone X style home button or more generic slots for speaker/microphone which still makes a bad icon and are going away.

Having an icon of smartphone in a smartphone for the call app wouldn't be very helpful. And considering modern usage a smartphone doesn't even a have a strong association with calling.

[Telaneo]

I mean, I knew how a rotary dial worked (from a UX perspective) just through watching films before I ever got to handle one (and I've never placed a real call with one), so I'd assume that gen Z and A can still recognise a ye olde phone, assuming its not one with some wild design that's on the edge of the (Graham) bell curve of what constitutes a normal 'phone' shape.

Even then, most call icons I've seen don't only have the receiver as part of the icon, but some waves to, to indicate sound (speaker/sound icons often do the same, unless intend to mean 'mute', but that's usually paired with a cross or something). Given that, you could probably get away with anything half-moon-ish shaped, so long as it also has those waves on the upper end of the icon, and it'd still be recognisable as a phone receiver and a 'call' icon (please don't do that though. Just make a normal icon).