Laptop diary tool in REV - Glyphs

[Mark Smith]

On 18 Jun 2006, at 16:28, Rob Cozens wrote:

> what better method is available to present the UI in a manner that  
> those who don't speak the language of the programer may understand?

But this can all too easily result in presenting the UI in a manner  
that no-one <except> the programmer understands, and even the  
programmer may have trouble if she's hasn't looked at it for a while.  
OK, a picture of a train with an arrow will suggest to anyone who  
knows what a train is that the station is that-away, but many of the  
routine actions we perform with computers are not so easily  
represented by a simple 16X16 picture - all anglophones tend to agree  
on what 'separate' means, but should the zipper icon mentioned in my  
previous post be open or closed?


> And using icons as label fields and column headings has a MAJOR  
> advantage over text: they remain the same size regardless of the  
> the language.  So if one is translating an application from French  
> to German, for example, one need not be concerned whether the  
> German label text takes up more field space than the same text in  
> French.

The major advantage is only to the programmer - not a good substitute  
for proper internationalization. And tool-tips, though they have  
their uses, really don't cut it - if the user can't fathom what what  
the un-captioned little pictures mean (either because of cultural  
differences, or because of poor choices by the programmer), then she  
has to hover her mouse over each icon until she finds the one she  
wants. Captions, in the users own language, are incomparably better.

It seems to me that pictures are great where one can assume a shared  
frame of reference (nearly everyone knows about trains, and trains  
tend to look quite alike everywhere), but when striving for clarity  
in a UI, I think it's essential to remember that humans tend to use  
language, far more than anything else, for the purpose of  
communicating information effectively.

Why abandon language, when it's so much more clear and efficient than  
just about anything else?

Best,

Mark