> Everyone knows the fuel distributor, or the window heating icon.
No they don't. I've been in a car with a front window defroster and a rear one. The icons are different, but who knows which is which.
> Not everyone understands "Fuel"
More than understand an inscrutable icon. Besides, anyone can look up Fuel in a dictionary. How do you look up an icon?
> "Włącz", "Rozmrażanie", "Paliwo"?
Dictionaries are marvelous tools. translate.google.com works great, too. There are no icon dictionaries, especially when everyone copyrights them so every icon is different. If you don't know what the icon means, you're borked.
Hey, I'd settle for the wretched icon if underneath it they're write "Defrost".
Besides, I've traveled in Poland. I don't know a word of Polish, but had a wonderful time regardless. Everyone I met was very nice.
1. If you have one. Google translate may also not be available due to lack of data or lack of mobile reception.
2. It assumes you know how to input/lookup the word. It's easier with Latin script. But try the same in Korea / Russia / Thailand / ... Even if you translate into target language you may not find the same version of the word, or just mix up symbols. (Without knowing they're different, what are the chances you'd mix up シ and ツ ?)
> There are no icon dictionaries, especially when everyone copyrights them so every icon is different
Is this really a thing? Every rear window heating icon I've seen since the 90s looked the same. I did check and can't find an image online from any brand not using that same symbol.
I meant icons in cars. I haven't seen variations or copyrights on those. iOS/Apple is a completely different story - they're purpose designed and unique. Symbols in cars are common everywhere.
I addressed entering English words before: "Even if you translate into target language you may not find the same version of the word" For example "gas" may not translate into what you expect.
I grew up in Europe where car interiors have always used only icons for as long as I've ridden them, and I've never heard of anyone being confused. Same with road signs. First time I visited the US I was amazed by how much text is on your street signs, where only icons would be used in Europe.
I recently bought a domestic car in Japan. I had no problems using any features since they all use the same icons that my parents' domestic Swedish 1991 Volvo had that I learned to drive on. If they used kanji words instead I'd be lost.
> There are no icon dictionaries,
It’s called “the manual”. You clan usually find it in the glovebox, and it doesn’t require a data connection. But in reality you've learned all these symbols by the time you get your drivers license (just like you've learned all the road signs).
> especially when everyone copyrights them so every icon is different.
> More than understand an inscrutable icon. Besides, anyone can look up Fuel in a dictionary. How do you look up an icon?
This makes sense. But I think that's why the unicode consortium adds common gestures/symbols/icons so actively. The icon-recognizing problem you address here is not impossible to fix with some app combining scanner and translator.
I appreciated your comments throughout this thread.
Symbol language works better in the longer term. When there's consensus about the icon functionality, they work. Look at traffic signs in Europe. They barely contain text. In the USA, they contain text all the time. In a large country where the main language is English this makes sense. In a continent consisting of many languages (and tourism), its important to have consensus on symbols instead.
What does suck is converting to symbols from text whilst you're used to text. That's the legacy of backwards compatibility.
You are oversimplifying. There is a valuable trade off between text on one end and abstract symbols on the other. Icons are in the middle.
On the text end of the spectrum you have high clarity, but it takes longer time to take in and find the one you are looking for. These are good if you rarely interact with the them and it's in situations that aren't urgent and you can't or don't have to train for.
Abstract symbols on the other hand are fastest to identify but require you to be trained. This makes sense for power users out urgent situations that are worth preparing for.
Icons are the middle ground. You can identify them faster than a walk of text and you might be able to guess pretty well what they mean on first encounter.
Using icons on a car this makes sense. You might have to do a little bit of trial and error the first time around, but will be much faster on future usage. This is a worthwhile trade off for a car, since you want the driver to quickly find the right control and then look at the road again. It works especially well given that the vast majority of icons are common between different cars.
I think it's even a better trade off for traffic signs, since drivers get trained anyway. All but new drivers will quickly start relying on the shape of the text on the sign, rather than read all the text on every speed limit sign. If you do need to read it, the amount of text is not practical.
> On the text end of the spectrum you have high clarity, but it takes longer time to take in and find the one you are looking for.
I just don't believe it takes a longer time to find the word "Defrost".
> These are good if you rarely interact with the them and it's in situations that aren't urgent and you can't or don't have to train for.
Take a look at aircraft instrument panels. They are very much designed for clarity and to be usable in emergencies, usually the hard way. They use words. Altimeter, Airspeed, Vertical Speed, etc.
> you might be able to guess pretty well what they mean on first encounter.
Not me. 3/4 of icons in new cars I don't know what they mean. Most of the ones on my iphone as well. Thankfully, sometimes they use words like Save, Edit, Library, etc., and I no trouble with them. The ones on the app screen thankfully have a word under them. After all, look at that weird stick icon, which has "App Store" written under it. Or the Photos icon. Apple has even given up on the trash can, reverting to the word "Delete".
> but will be much faster on future usage
Pilots and airplane cockpit designers evidently disagree.
> drivers
Quite a lot of concepts have no picture that makes any inherent sense for it. Like "60 miles per hour". Or "stop". or "yield". You can certainly get used to a red octagon meaning Stop, but for someone who is not trained on it, the red octagon might as well mean "pizza next exit".
I lived in Europe around 1970, when they were transitioning from the old signage with words to the new ones. They wanted to harmonize the signs. The trouble is, if they used words, it was a matter of national prestige which language was used. Using icons was a solution to the political issue, not a readability one.
The American stop sign was settled on because nobody could agree which European stop sign would be selected, so the compromise was none of them.
To sell this all to the public was the notion that icons are better, but it was really political.
> Take a look at aircraft instrument panels. They are very much designed for clarity and to be usable in emergencies, usually the hard way. They use words. Altimeter, Airspeed, Vertical Speed, etc.
People are trained for those instruments. The written names are not that useful, because you won't fly something before understanding most of the cockpit. The instruments often use shortened or genetic name which is you need to learn beforehand. Example:
What can you learn from reading "FD", or "INS", or "DH", or "M/CG"? Or from tens of completely unlabelled indicators. You either need to already know it, or learn from the manual.
Calling it an "altimeter" reinforces what it is, even "FD" does, an icon does not. Icons are not better, or instrument makers would switch to them and the FAA would mandate them.
Believe it or not, but pilots can get frazzled under stress and make mistakes. Having an actual label that says "Altimeter" is better than the pilot having to remember that squiggle means "Altimeter". Just call it "Altimeter" in the first place. One less level of indirection.
For a related UI case, pilots would learn the different sounds of all the warning horns in the cockpit. But pilots under stress would get confused about which sound meant what. The solution? Replace the sound with a voice saying what's wrong, like "pull up pull up". Works much better.
>No they don't. I've been in a car with a front window defroster and a rear one. The icons are different, but who knows which is which.
Umm ... I do?
For me this was really a "figure out once" and remember forever.
And even if I can't remember which is which, it's trivial to press them and find out. Especially if you have the fan/ac running.
Perhaps they should make this as an international standard and part of the driving test? I mean, if we can learn what all the road signs mean, this isn't any harder.
Edit: Cannot add more comments so replying here:
Looking at your comment above, you seem to believe we're transitioning from words to pictographs in cars. My experience doesn't agree. I've never seen a car without these, going back to the 80's. Looking at old Toyota Corollas, they use the icon. Same for the 80's Corvette.
Given how prevalent they are, did you ever ponder why they use icons instead of text? Serious question.
> For me this was really a "figure out once" and remember forever.
When you drive a car rarely, you don't really remember what all the frackin icons mean. Besides, that's why phonetic written languages were invented - so you don't have to memorize 10,000 pictures. Just 26 of them.
Phonetic writing really is a great invention. It's better than pictographic languages. Good luck looking up a pictograph on google.
Slowly, over decades, we're developing iconography for common operations. Take power buttons, or menu buttons (the "hamburger" icon). It takes not only time, but some amount of consensus and buy in from a significant portion of the marketplace.
In the US at least the fuel level indicator is fairly easily recognized by a gas pump symbol, and the temperature gauge is recognized by a thermometer icon. The problem is, these don't denote those things exactly but fuel and temperature in general, and sometimes they are instead dummy lights indicating a warning about high temperature or low fuel, and not where the guages are.
Chinese writing works in exactly the same way European written languages work. It records more semantic information than they tend to do, but the functioning is no different.
> It records more semantic information than they tend to do
Are you sure? When I was in Japan I compared books printed in English with the same books in Japanese. The Japanese versions always had more pages. It looked like while the Kanji characters conveyed more meaning, they were larger and in the net required more space.
- What I'm referring to is the fact that in order to write down a Chinese word, you often need to know what it means. The semantics inform the spelling, to a much greater degree than in European writing systems. I am in fact sure about this.
- Translations are usually much wordier than the original texts they translate, for philosophy-of-translation reasons. Were you comparing Japanese originals to their English translations?
You open the owner’s manual, look up the section for the relevant bit of dashboard or console in the table of contents, flip to that page, and read the description of the buttons, gauges, and other labeled elements.
I am much better at using CLI's than I am using GUI's - just for this reason.
Every time I see an icon, I have to think - what is it the person is trying to tell me. Usually, words work much better for me.
I know many people that love architecture diagrams. I much prefer to read the words instead of looking at pictures. To me, a word is worth a thousand pictures.
No. I am accustomed to reading documentation, especially when something isn’t clear to me. Bad UI design for a car would involve icons totally divorced from the physical function and which closely resemble each other.
I wonder why an “international user” has bought a car whose manual isn’t localized and who can’t get a localized manual online.
Why are you willing to use a dictionary to look up a word, but not willing to use a car manual to look up a symbol? Do you throw out your car manuals and replace them with dictionaries or something?
No they don't. I've been in a car with a front window defroster and a rear one. The icons are different, but who knows which is which.
> Not everyone understands "Fuel"
More than understand an inscrutable icon. Besides, anyone can look up Fuel in a dictionary. How do you look up an icon?
> "Włącz", "Rozmrażanie", "Paliwo"?
Dictionaries are marvelous tools. translate.google.com works great, too. There are no icon dictionaries, especially when everyone copyrights them so every icon is different. If you don't know what the icon means, you're borked.
Hey, I'd settle for the wretched icon if underneath it they're write "Defrost".
Besides, I've traveled in Poland. I don't know a word of Polish, but had a wonderful time regardless. Everyone I met was very nice.