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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
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Subject: Icons (was: FreeBSD keyboard)
To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 13:14:28 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat)
In-Reply-To: <199607140713.JAA15291@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Jul 14, 96 09:13:34 am
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J Wunsch writes:
>
> As John Fieber wrote:
>
>> It has nothing to do with typing ability.  It has everything to
>> do with the basic fact that humans are far better at
>> recognition than recall.  Recall may be more efficient, but only
>> comes after a great time investment in memorization.  For
>> infrequent users, or infrequent tasks, recall will never be as
>> efficient as recognition.
>
> The problem arises, however, that even for frequent users of such a
> recognition-based system, the efficiency cannot grow beyond a certain
> point.

Indeed.  You can learn it in a day, and you spend the rest of the time
you use it paying for doing so.

> When looking at the icon and toolbar etc. forest of the typical
> application of these days, i still believe it's rather done for optics
> than to improve recognition.  I usually get the impression that even
> the infrequent winloose user has about the same idea about the
> particular meaning of these 25 icons in the toolbar as me, who does
> not know anything about these programs at all.

I think the icon approach has outlived its utility.  Once upon a time,
when windows-oriented programs had limited utility and people didn't
demand too much in the way of functionality, and icons were a
convenient way to help them.  Now I suspect they confuse more than
they help.  Certainly I share your hatred of these cluttered "modern"
screens.

Greg