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Icons, symbols, and signs: visible languages to facilitate communication

Icons, symbols, and signs: visible languages to facilitate communication Icons, Symbols, and Signs: Visible Languages to Facilitate Communication By Aaron Marcus President, Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A) Aaron@AmandA.com Icons and symbols have been part of the user ™s experience of computing for decades, and many people tend to take them for granted as part of graphical user interfaces. But they weren ™t always there. The Apple Macintosh popularized œicons  as the slightly misnamed term for these visual signs, and by the mid1980s they became part of graphical user interface paradigms and associated with the desktop metaphor. Windowing environments like the Macintosh, Windows, Open Look, Motif, NeXT, and other desktop and workstation platforms all adopted variations Illustrations by mwienerarts.com of the trash icon, folder icons, document icons, and specific application icons. Today, most work or play environments include (some might say are littered with) 50 to 100 icons. As I write these words, in fact, I counted about 75 visual signs currently on my screen. Is this good or bad? As user-interface designers, I think we care about the quality and use of icons and i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png interactions Association for Computing Machinery

Icons, symbols, and signs: visible languages to facilitate communication

interactions , Volume 10 (3) – May 1, 2003

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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
1072-5520
DOI
10.1145/769759.769774
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Icons, Symbols, and Signs: Visible Languages to Facilitate Communication By Aaron Marcus President, Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A) Aaron@AmandA.com Icons and symbols have been part of the user ™s experience of computing for decades, and many people tend to take them for granted as part of graphical user interfaces. But they weren ™t always there. The Apple Macintosh popularized œicons  as the slightly misnamed term for these visual signs, and by the mid1980s they became part of graphical user interface paradigms and associated with the desktop metaphor. Windowing environments like the Macintosh, Windows, Open Look, Motif, NeXT, and other desktop and workstation platforms all adopted variations Illustrations by mwienerarts.com of the trash icon, folder icons, document icons, and specific application icons. Today, most work or play environments include (some might say are littered with) 50 to 100 icons. As I write these words, in fact, I counted about 75 visual signs currently on my screen. Is this good or bad? As user-interface designers, I think we care about the quality and use of icons and i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u

Journal

interactionsAssociation for Computing Machinery

Published: May 1, 2003

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