Re: [kde-artists] Bad Studies Are Worse: About the Recent Results on Detail in Icon Design
Nuno Pinheiro <[email protected]> Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:17:50 +0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.kde.devel.accessibility,gmane.comp.kde.artists,gmane.comp.kde.usability |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
A Quinta, 10 de Janeiro de 2013 10:22:10 mutlu_inek escreveu: Bfffff dont worry, there is nothing wrong with the article. as general rulle I try to keep the icons as simple as possible, and I have no doubt that the results are merly an indication of somthing I knew and strugle with, complex metafores are hard to explain in icons... Don't take it the wrong way but I have been doing icons for somtime now and have a bit of experirnce on them, exemple in the past studies I could allwyas predict the results, this results come as no surprise at all, and unfurtunatly wille in some cases I coud do better in most cases they are just the result of complex action being explosed via iconographie. So dont worry im not mindlesly loking at this results. and historicly I have been very good at ignoring some "user feedback" aka in oxygen save icon is still a floppy disk. > Dear Icon Designers, Usability People and Survey Makers, > > I am cross-posting a response I left on the blog entry "More is worse: > About Detail in Icons" posted by Björn Balazs on User Promt and > aggregated on Planet KDE. It can be found here: > http://user-prompt.com/more-is-worse-about-detail-in-icons/ > > I do not intend to deride the work that has > gone into this study, but I fear that the community may be misled by the > results of a highly flawed methodology. Mind that I am not a statistician, > but I know enough about this topic that I can spot some major flaws in > no-time. Please find a part of the text (with less typos) below. > > > """ > > This > study is so flawed that the value of its results is nonexistent. Taking it > seriously may even be harmful. > > > First of all, the distinction between low-detail > and high-detail icons is highly inconsistent. Second, those in the first > category point to rather well-known, well-entrenched and often-used actions > the icons of which many will easily recognize, while the latter are less > often used. Third, the latter category also includes icons such as the > "auto-spellcheck" and the "spelling and grammar" icons that are very > close to one another both in meaning and in iconic representation. Thus, an > allegedly low-detail icons like "save" will score higher than either of the > spell-related icons due to the inherent ambiguity. Concluding that this has > to do with the level of detail (which in my opinion is very similar) is not > the way to go. > > Instead, > you would need two sets of icons that represent the same actions, one > with more and one with less detail. Both icon sets would have to be > equally known or unknown to your audience. A statistician might tell you > more. > > I do appreciate your work, but please > don't encourage the F/OSS community to invest resources into design that > are misdirected based on well-meaning but simply wrongly executed > studies. > > Thank you. > """ > > All the best, > > mutlu > > ____________________________________________________________________________ > __ [email protected] | https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-artists