Talk about the icon message

Remember the early pixel icon ... at that time http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/9655.html "> Super Mary's Pixel little one is still familiar with warm childhood memories. The pixel icons for early OS/2-WARP4 systems are also interesting:

Although it seems that the "Recycle Bin" is still a problem in understanding. But when the technology is not mature, only support 16 colors, design or there are many images of metaphorical creativity inside.

The important role of the icon is to convey the correct action information to the user. Many icons are also a good way to use the realism of a photographic record. It is meaningful to draw people's familiar objects in detail, but what is the point of drawing objects or abstract concepts, such as networks, that people are unfamiliar with? How many users have seen a bare hard drive? Users ultimately rely on additional text to understand.

Scott McCloud in the "How to understand the animation" ("Understanding Comics") a book of animation image analysis can also be applied in the graphic interface design, reasonable analysis of the realism of the icon.

A smiley face on the left of a particular man to the right can refer to anyone. It can be explained that if you are expressing a common concept, the visual details must be reduced. The environment of the interface design itself requires to minimize cultural and customary differences, and to achieve universality of graphics, as well as to reduce unnecessary detail.
But the details can not be too little, recognition is absolutely the first necessary condition, as much as possible to meet the user for a short time to understand the meaning of the graphic.

The left can be clearly recognized as a human face, but simplified to the right, it is difficult to identify and understand.
Take the actual icon on your computer for example, the home icon

Compared to the most realistic house on the left, the more details the more difficult to understand the meaning of the reference, the right to universality and a high number of recognition.
Of course too little detail, if the right icon goes to get rid of windows and chimneys, the home icon is more like a pointing arrow.

Realism and recognition should be maintained in a balance of curves. The perfect graphic interface design should appear in the center of the curve.
What should be the reasonable and appropriate details? What kind of details don't distract users?
Also take two keys for example:

The button on the left is too realistic, if put into the interface easy to distract users attention. The static border on the right side does not promote interaction between users and is easily ignored.
Here are a few gossip, I think GUI designers and General 10243.html "> visual designer or graphic designer The biggest difference is that the design of the pattern to have some interaction behavior of the implied role." For example, the Flip button on the ipad will give users a hint of where to flip.

The psychological implication of this behavior is that there is a special concept called "affordance" in psychology. Refers to the user encounters the objective phenomenon to take the instinctive action. Give a best example to illustrate:

Japan's one vent game is called "Putiputi". It's a plastic bubble toy. The idea of this product comes from seeing plastic film bubbles and unknowingly trying to squeeze it, which is one of the phenomena called "affordance" in psychology. If you design a product, you can take into account the instinctive consciousness and behavior of human beings, and suggest certain actions, the interactive products that are designed will be very creative. The designer creates a "=" which is inserted between the external object and the user's psychological mapping. In life, a kind of curing image in the user's heart, the product only really has its own "language", to "speak" with the user communication. Of course, affordance phenomenon, if the master is not good, may also bring negative effects on product design. Because people may also because of psychological awareness of poorly designed products to operate.
For some special graphic symbols, the user is able to catch without hindrance. When I was traveling in Europe, I found that even in non-English speaking countries, I encountered figures, arrows, and so on, even if there was no context, anyone could quickly understand. numeric representation order; These can be used as the safe use of the image.
In short, graphic interface design, graphics is a large amount of a symbol, to pass some functional information. The symbol itself is concise and abstract, how to understand the symbols and related meanings more quickly and accurately is the first problem of design. So the rational application of realistic means, handling good details, to achieve "one of the points is too long, one of the points is too short" effect, increase user interaction desire is the most important.

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