Commentary First Commentary on Haramundanis Thomas R. Williams, Department of Technical Communication, University of Washington Let me begin by stating that I share Ms. Haramundanis' concern with the recent explosion in the creation and use of icons among interface designers and so,ware developers. I suspect that, like myself, almost everyone who has used virtually any kind of software product produced since the introduction of graphic user interfaces in the mid'80s has encountered at least one set of undecipherable visual labels whose intended meaning probably would have been conveyed more efficientlyand unambiguously as words. In fact, I don't even have to go to my computer for an example: ! can't decipher all of the icons on the control panel for the elevator in my building. I also find myself in general agreement with her belief that the meanings of icons have to be learned--that icons by themselves are often inadequate to precisely express what they signify, and, consequently, need the nature of their relationships to their referents clarified (e.g. representational, analogical, metaphorical, arbitrary?). I agree, as well, with many of the principles for the creation and use of icons she distills from her discussion of their many limitations. My
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First commentary on haramundanis
Williams, Thomas R.
Follow ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation
, Volume 20 (2)
Association for Computing Machinery – May 1, 1996
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