) The error is concise or not concise.

A short and small articleArticle, Original: false simplicity by usabilitypost

Sometimes seemingly concise things may not be so concise. For example, Twitter clients are everywhere, and their buttons generally use pure icons instead of text. These small icons really save space and look very elegant and concise, but is it true?

Let's take tweetdeck as an example:

I don't know if I am stupid, but it is difficult for me to understand the meaning of these icons. The first one looks like a refresh, and then the second icon is a stick? Next is a wrench? Then question mark? What is the last warning sign? But in the end I found that the "little stick" actually represents "Login browsing", and the warning mark actually indicates "logout "...

I don't use tweetdeck every day, so every time I log on, I have to learn what the icons represent. This situation occurs extensively in other sections of the tweetdeck interface that have more Twitter clients.

A neat line of pure icons will make the meeting look fresh, but it may not make your interface better. Especially when you do not need to distinguish between icons by color, and the metaphor of the icons is also unclear, the situation will become more and more serious. Icons play an irreplaceable role in the interface, but they are still a visual aid to help users better understand button text and so on.

About the icon, Jef Raskin (Note: Jef is the father of the Macintosh Tower) once said the following two sentences:

In almost all relevant studies, quotation found that icons are more difficult to understand than words, especially when scanning the screen at the first glance. This is contrary to the original intention of using icons to help users understand. Quotation's replacement of text with small icons can save the use of screen space, but we must always ask ourselves "what is the cost ?". The smaller the button, the more inconvenient it is to be clicked, and the more difficult it is to be found by users. In addition, it is difficult to distinguish between small icons.

-Jef Raskin, the humane Interface

As long as you select the correct metaphor, color, location, and so on, the icon can still play a very positive role in the interface, especially when the number is large, only text layout will be very messy. Because Icons can be separated by some visual languages, such as colors, shapes, and textures. In addition, the general icon application can expand the click range.

In short, do not blindly use icons to replace text because of simplified interfaces. Overhead conciseness is often counterproductive.