User experience Design: Too much simplicity tends to backfire

Web page Production WEBJX article introduction: the simple design of the wrong.

Sometimes seemingly concise things may not be so concise, such as now everywhere Twitter clients, their buttons generally use a pure icon rather than text. These small icons really save space, look very elegant, also very concise, but the actual situation is this?

Let's take TweetDeck as an example to see:

I don't know if I'm a bit stupid, but it's really hard for me to figure out the meaning of these icons. The first one looks like a refresh, and then the second icon is a stick? And then a wrench? And then the question mark? And finally the warning sign? But in the end I found that the "little stick" actually represents "single column browsing", and the warning sign actually means "logout" ...

I don't use TweetDeck every day, so every time I log in, I have to learn what those icons represent. Such a situation is widespread in other parts of the TweetDeck interface that are already more on Twitter clients.

A neat line of pure icons will make the meeting seem refreshing, but he doesn't necessarily make your interface better. This is especially true when you don't use color to differentiate icons, and the metaphor of icons is not clear. Icons are irreplaceable in the interface, but they are, after all, as 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) once said two words:

In almost all of the relevant research, we find that icons are more difficult to understand than words, especially when scanning the screen at first glance. This is the opposite of what we use the icon to help the user understand.

Using small icons instead of text can actually save screen space, but we must always ask ourselves, "What's the price?" ”。 The smaller the button, the more inconvenient the click, the more difficult to be found by users. And the difference between the different small icons is difficult to distinguish clearly.

-Jef Raskin, the humane Interface

As long as the correct choice of metaphor, color, location and so on, the icon can still play a very positive role in the interface, especially the number of many, only the text will be very messy when the arrangement. Because the icon can use some visual language, such as color, shape, texture and so on to distinguish. And the general application of the icon can also enlarge the range of clicks.

In short, do not blindly use the icon to replace the text because of simplifying the interface, too much simplicity tends to backfire.