Icons can be seen everywhere these days like we see when traveling, whether it be of street signs that warn us of entering school zones to airports with signs guiding us to certain areas. But in the digital world, the use of icons is a necessity to help navigate within a website or an application and to keep us engaged. With the continued demand for social media and other digital services, icons are becoming a norm since logographs used in hieroglyphs in ancient Egyptian civilizations.
Although hieroglyphs depicted various symbols and pictures similar to the icons we see today, they were used differently in terms of what is being conveyed. A hieroglyphic symbol by itself would represent a consonant or syllable but when it’s placed with other hieroglyphs, it forms a concept which tells a story. On the other hand, with icons used today, which serve to provide information as a whole or as an action to be conducted; rather than bits and pieces of a concept.
Using the social media platform, Facebook, we can see what is being communicated and learned. Here’s what the app shows in terms of icons on an iPhone. Towards the top of the page, you can see three icons displayed with words beside them to further help describe what the icon means. As far as what it does, we can only guess from the icon and word itself. The green icon that shows an image of a “picture” with the word photo could have a couple of meanings. While this icon is used to take a snapshot from your phones’ camera, a person who hasn’t used Facebook at all can interpret it with another meaning/task (accessing your photos, viewing photos, etc.).
Another example is the bottom taskbar where you can see six different icons. These icons are not accompanied by a word just like the first example and would require some trial and error to understand what they mean and accomplish. The bell icon (a symbol to get one’s attention) can be confusing at first but after clicking on it, symbolizes “notifications”. While many icons are easily identified for what they are through repetition from multiple apps, we still won’t know exactly what it means until it is clicked on.
I felt the importance of making new clear icons! but people are following the old past it is hard to change in a wile.
I agree as well – some icons need text until they can be learned. We can assume people learn these from other places but we shouldn’t.
I agree with your opinion. Some icons that are not obvious enough do need the aid of text.