Web Icons: Which Ones Take the Place of Words?

Symbolic pictures are everywhere in today's world, from road signs bearing a capital P with a line through it (no parking) to the skull and crossbones appearing on bottles in kids' cartoons (poison). On the Web, pictorial icons represent an attempt to simplify, save space and appeal to multilingual users. Do they really get the message across and enable a site to communicate without words?

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Web Icons: Which Ones Take the Place of Words?
Usability Psychologist Susan Weinschenk Offers a Quiz and Tips

Edgar, WI - Symbolic pictures are everywhere in today's world, from road
signs bearing a capital P with a line through it (no parking) to the
skull and crossbones appearing on bottles in kids' cartoons (poison).
On the Web, pictorial icons represent an attempt to simplify, save space
and appeal to multilingual users. Do they really get the message across
and enable a site to communicate without words?

"Good icons have either been used so much they're generally well known
or they're guessable by most people from the picture," notes
psychologist Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D., president of the Weinschenk
Consulting Group (www.weinschenk.com), which studies users' responses to
Web sites. Weinschenk recently created a "Guess the Web Icon" quiz
(www.weinschenk.com/knowledge/icon_quiz.asp) that asks the viewer
to guess the meaning of 10 icons, 5 are good and 5 are shoddy. Lousy icons use a vague, nonstandard or poorly rendered picture."

Designing an icon to be viewed on the computer is an art in itself, says
Weinschenk, with designers working pixel by pixel to make a simple idea
clear and understandable. Then testing is essential. Web developers
without a budget for formal user testing can gauge icons'
understandability by following three simple steps:

1. Show icons to users on paper or a screen without any context,
telling them what kind of site they'd appear at and asking what the
users think each icon would do.

2. Show two unmatched columns to users and ask them to match each icon
with the correct meaning, like the Icon Quiz described above.

3. Show users a Web page containing the icons and see if they can pick
the correct one for a particular purpose.

"Bad icons are even more prevalent in Web-based applications than at Web
sites," says Weinschenk. "Fortunately the worst ones tend to drop out
of use. Those that last are the ones that communicate well."

To play "Guess the Web Icon," readers can visit
www.weinschenk.com/knowledge/icon_quiz.asp.