Even if they couldn’t identify a universally understood icon, an existing user can recognize a familiar symbol faster than text, and symbols at least provide some clue that isn’t dependent on English comprehension.
II2II · 9h ago
The point is that it wasn't a universally understood icon at the time. It was culturally, not even linguistically, dependent. The footnote even suggests that it was a relatively new symbol in computer interfaces, having been introduced some 8 months earlier in NextSTEP. Adding to the difficulty: some people couldn't identify the simplistic icon as a magnifying glass.
English compression was not an issue here. The buttons would have been translated.
Anyways, it was an interesting read for me. It took me several years to figure out why the icon disappeared after I upgraded from a 386 to a 486. (Clearly an OS upgrade was involved.) Now I know why Microsoft made that change.
hulitu · 2h ago
> The point is that it wasn't a universally understood icon at the time
Just like the hamburger, or the 3 dots menu, or whatever a program manager thinks it shall be the symbol for a menu.
The point is: everything is learned (see discussions about intuitive interfaces in alt.sysadmin.recovery 20 years ago). If you change every couple of months the meaning of a symbol, nobody will know what that symbol means anymore.
JadeNB · 12h ago
> Even if they couldn’t identify a universally understood icon, an existing user can recognize a familiar symbol faster than text, and symbols at least provide some clue that isn’t dependent on English comprehension.
Of course any such decision will be a balancing act, but I can certainly imagine that an unexpected or confusing symbol would be genuinely confusing or frightening to a new user (think how early this was in mass-market computing!), and that an experienced user (1) can re-learn, (2) anyway probably doesn't have to re-learn muscle memory still gets them to the right place, and (3) is more likely to be invested in the system than a new user, so that it might be considered less essential to invest in keeping them than in bringing on new users.
bediger4000 · 15h ago
What does this mean with respect to the symbolism of a 3.5 inch floppy disk as the "save" icon? Surely that's universal!
Even if they couldn’t identify a universally understood icon, an existing user can recognize a familiar symbol faster than text, and symbols at least provide some clue that isn’t dependent on English comprehension.
English compression was not an issue here. The buttons would have been translated.
Anyways, it was an interesting read for me. It took me several years to figure out why the icon disappeared after I upgraded from a 386 to a 486. (Clearly an OS upgrade was involved.) Now I know why Microsoft made that change.
Just like the hamburger, or the 3 dots menu, or whatever a program manager thinks it shall be the symbol for a menu.
The point is: everything is learned (see discussions about intuitive interfaces in alt.sysadmin.recovery 20 years ago). If you change every couple of months the meaning of a symbol, nobody will know what that symbol means anymore.
Of course any such decision will be a balancing act, but I can certainly imagine that an unexpected or confusing symbol would be genuinely confusing or frightening to a new user (think how early this was in mass-market computing!), and that an experienced user (1) can re-learn, (2) anyway probably doesn't have to re-learn muscle memory still gets them to the right place, and (3) is more likely to be invested in the system than a new user, so that it might be considered less essential to invest in keeping them than in bringing on new users.