Re: [IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...
Grace said 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. and we have clients that are 55-70 and building the actions that was made sense to them in user testing. Its so good to hear people thinking about cross cultural/language differences during development. Its an interesting challenge you have got. Not only are the customers likely to intuit different icons or understand different text descriptions of the functions because of language and culture, but they also are older and potentially less likely to be familiar with buzz words. And of course as we age our visual acuity reduces so icons would have to be very visually simple and clear as well. I'd go back to the developers with your cross language user testing results and say we need to store different icons or text for different languages. Are you obliged to shove each language into exactly the same design? German speakers are probably comfortable with their labels taking rather more screen estate than Japanese. Can the developers help you with a template that expands or contracts with the differing requirements of languages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24371 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
[IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...
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 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...
On Jan 9, 2008 12:04 PM, Grady Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Which are better, Icons or Labels? Are icons perceived differently in different languages? I don't know about better or not, but when faced with the same decision last year at our company, I worked up a set of icons that could be used on our controls. It took a long time and many review cycles. We made tooltip text localizable for the graphical controls. The application originally had the worst of all worlds: text displayed in graphics on control surfaces. It's my understanding that using symbols instead of text for controls is periodically attempted as a way to avoid localization of control surface text, but that these efforts are not always successful. I ended up doing a fair amount of research into international symbols along the way to try to avoid pitfalls. I might not have made the same decision if I was creating an application for a kiosk, or for a pop-in-and-out-of-it web page. Ours is a communications application for trained operators, so it's understood that some hop-on-board time is needed. I've also had some previous experience designing icon symbol sets for specialized applications, so I mostly knew what I was getting into. Unexpected benefit: the eye-candy aspect of making the symbols light up pretty for the various control states got our dev team excited about the redesign. Hope this helps, Michael Micheletti *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
