Hello Everyone ...
I am designing a softphone application. We plan to offer the application in
various languages, Spanish, German, Japanese and of course English. In my
design I opted to use labels for various actions such as "Transfer" "Hold"
"Conference" or "Hangup." I did this for a few reasons:
1. Phones use text to describe their functionality already, and people
understand what those actions are.
2. I figured that it would be easier to translate those actions to the
other languages.
3. I did not think that the icons would translate themselves well from
one language to another.
4. With labels in mind, I use context menus to build the actions, so
clicking "Transfer" gives you a context menu with various options like
"contact via dial pad" or "contact via phone book," thus building a sentence
"Transfer contact via dial pad." This was done because we have clients that
are 55-70 and building the actions that was made sense to them in user
testing.
Here lies my problem, development is using Adobe Flex, and say that it is
"easier if I used icons instead of labels" Flex apparently does not support
floating of elements, so like in html/css, as the buttons got longer, the
other buttons would just carry down. The developers would have to position
(x,y) for every button for every language.
So my questions are:
1. Which are better, Icons or Labels? Are icons perceived differently
in different languages?
2. Should the development issue dictate whats done? (I say toughen up
Nancy! and get er' done!)
Now, I have offered a middle ground, that is to mock up each and get
feedback on the icons and the actions, etc.
I am just curious to know what you all think.
Thanks,
Grady Kelly
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gradykelly.com
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