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For GUIs, Just the Right Degree of Realism
mr crypto writes "User interfaces make copious use of pictures and symbols, but how abstract should images be? Lukas Mathis has an interesting blog entry on where to draw the line."
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Talk about confusing! When I first saw that sparkling gold bar on Visual Studio, I thought it was a payment option to Microsoft to buy more features for the IED.
tl;dr
Yes, I agree. Redundancy turns precious information to noise.
many people are too timid to press anything they don't already understand
Given my experience in IT in corporate America, I would say that this is not only not the case, but REALLY not the case.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
You may say, well, if you put all your commands in English, then only English speakers can use your app.
Actually, you don't have to be able to speak English. As long as you can read it you're fine.
Toward the end of the article, the author indirectly brings up a very good question: Why the heck is the VLC media player icon an orange traffic cone?? Is it because it's kind of the shape of a CRT? Is it cautioning us about the kind of videos we'd watch that came from the Internet? Maybe it's just constantly under construction (even though it's not in beta)? Perhaps it's something more technical and is a reference to the rods and cones that are the light receptors in our eyes. Or maybe I have it all wrong and it's a piece of candy corn sitting on an orange plate, to show how VLC serves up eye candy.
* That one sounds easy for an IT-pro who knows that the concept of a "home directory" is older than icons - but that only makes this meaning of "home" an old one, and not an intuitive one.
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
bickerdyke
You can give me flack for it, but I'm going to go ahead and say that the Slashdot comment interface is very intuitive. I know the reply button starts a reply. The Cancel button cancels it. The option button lets me see various options. Very intuitive, I have not needed to press any of these buttons to know their respective meaning. That by definition makes it intuitive.
And the "Quote Parent" button adds the prefix "My daddy always used to say ..." to your reply.