Interfacial Relations 5
Volume Number: 7
Issue Number: 10
Column Tag: Developer's Forum
Interfacial Relations, Part V 
IPROS and ICONS
The most visible and memorable aspect of the Graphics User Interface are its tool
and function icons.
Iconography is a design discipline with a long history. Long before computer
interface was a pixel in the eye of its beholder, communication through icons was
triumphed as the solution to international communication and brotherhood. Otto
Neurath, Viennese philosopher and social scientist, “hoped to establish a global standard
for education and to unite humanity through one ordered, universally readable language
of vision.”--sentiments not that different from some graphic interface proponents.
Interfacial Relations Part V looks at static icons and their role in the
communication process. Then it cautions you about possible iconographic pitfalls and
suggests an alternative way icons can be designed to communicate more relationally.
ICANs
Icons can be immediate, attractive, interesting, cross-cultural, concise, easy to
understand and simple. They convert a blank slate into a miniature gallery. They’ve
been influential enough to redefine the look of today’s computer interface. But are they
substantial enough to grow with that interface?
Iconography
Isotype, an icon-based system developed by Otto Neurath in the 1920‘s, carried
iconography to extremes. As much a passion as a philosophy, isotype exerts a strong
influence in computer interface design.
“Neurath believed that language is the medium of all knowledge: empirical facts
are only available to the human mind through symbols... But (he thought) verbal
language’s structure and vocabulary failed to be a consistent, logical model of objects
and relations in the physical world. Neurath held that vision was the saving link
between language and nature, and that, hence, pictorial signs would provide a universal
bridge between symbolic, generic language and direct, empirical experience.1"
Isotype’s philosophical underpinnings reach deep. They extend into logical
positivism and the struggle between rationalism (a cause championed by logicians and
analysts) and empiricism (fur thered by those that believed knowledge was only
possible through direct experience, e specially as ga thered through the sense of sight).
Isotype responds to this debate with a position that: “attempts to eclipse interpretation
with perception, to replace reading with seeing.”
But is iconography precise enough to define a computer interface? Or has our
use of icons caused us to learn software by approximation rather than understanding.2
ICAN’Ts?
What happens when you try and combine icons into an interface?
“...Programmers and graphic designers are creating sets of signs that in some ways
transcend traditional verbal language. In fact, the number of signs may be even greater
than some natural languages used for simple communication.”3 Does this imply that
icon-based computer programs are providing us with alternative languages?
Design Factors
In one form or another, icons are here to stay. When introduced, icons could get
by purely on their “Oh Wow!” appeal.
I1: “Oh Wow!”
Not always obvious, they were usually engaging enough to attract your interest.
And they lasted. Icons like the trash can survived the ridicule of command line critics
enamored with alphabet soup interfaces. In the final judgment, icons--as interface
guidelines accurately observed--were clearer and more concise reminders than words
or their abbreviations.
For a few years Macintosh users could recognize and name every icon and its
parent program. But as icons proliferated, recognition shifted from forms to functions.
Power users switching to the more useful Finder Views found icons more useful as file,
folder, or application indicators than as the unique pictures illustrating each
application.
Tool icons coalesced. Despite the endless possibilities, the number of unique
images actually employed to define basic program operations has been surprisingly
small. What’s interesting is that though the icon may be the same, its functionality