When icons fail to deliver
Icons are important elements of user interfaces. They can e.g.
- Save space on toolbars and buttons,
- Speed up recognition compared to text once learned (for instance icons based on convention such as a cogwheel for “settings”) and
- Reduce the need for additional textual explanation (e.g. icons representing the result of an action, like the banding of rows in a table editor).
A bus air-fan icon pair not up to the task
However, sometimes icons fail to deliver and I came across such an example while riding the bus.
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