Where is the IXDA FAQ? This has got to be one of the most frequently asked questions for UI design of all time.
The big question is this: what problem are you trying to solve? And for who? Get agreement on the answers to those questions before worrying about icons vs text. That said, the old saw for this has 6 factors: 1) Text wins for ease of discovery, recall and comprehension. But text always takes up much more space, especially if you support multiple languages. 2) Icons are almost entirely about space savings and cost savings. You can fit 20 icon buttons on a toolbar, instead of 8 text buttons. Also, you do not have to translate a picture, while you do have to translate text. The price is that if you show someone a new app that's icon only they'll spend 5 minutes reading the tooltips on each button to figure out what the hell everything is. 3) Every toolbar design in history is a comprimise between the value of text, and the space/cost savings of icon based buttons. Buttons with both icons & text exist. 4) Power users and new users have different needs, and the best design of toolbars and menus can be very different. Depending on what kind of usage your apps get, the sweet spots would change. 5) Many commands have no 32x32 pixel iconic representation. The goal then becomes looking distinctive so at least you can gain some recall/distinction value. You do have to think about how good your icons are. 6) Customization is the escape hatch. If you give advanced users the ability to customize the toolbars, you can weigh the defaults towards novice and infrequent use. UI escape hatches are prone to abuse. It's very hard to give you specific advice without seeing a picture of your UI, and having a clue about what kinds of usage was common. The differences between menus / text buttons / icon buttons is a blurry mess these days, as there are various hybrid designs of these things out there and you might be using one. -Scott Scott Berkun www.scottberkun.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Matkinson Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [IxDA Discuss] When to use icons and when to use text We are redesigning a web application for collaborative review of design work. We currently use text-based buttons for drop-down menus e.g. File | Versions | Workspaces etc. We are having a raging debate about whether to switch from text to icons for some of the key functions and pull them out of the menus e.g. Compare Versions - users can compare two versions of a design side by side Upload New Version - upload a new version of a design. New Person - add a new person as a team member. What are the pros and cons of icons vs. text-based buttons. Are there any good resources that provide guidance on when to use each approach? I already searched the threads and came across the Braindrawing workshop idea. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
