Icon usage in MAT
Outcome and a beginning discussion of the 1st Tails UX session brought up the following issue.
UX experts said:
a) The fact that the user prefers using the menu items rather than the icons might indicate that the icons alone are not expressive enough. b) Iconography might need to be couple with text to make its function clearer
sajolida replies: That's already the case in Tails 1.1. This reminds me of a story I read a while ago: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the_end_of_an_icon/ « Why make the user go spelunking for the information they need? Just give it to them. »
MAT is taking a good approach here by combining the icons with titles. But still I have some concerns:
-
The icon of the "Scour" button looks all-right but the title is pretty obscure. I had to search a dictionary to know that scour means "clean". Why not use "clean", like in the contextual menu in Nautilus?
-
The "Check" button has a magnifying glass a icon. I associate the magnifying glass with "have a close look" or "analyze". I would expect it to tell me more about the metadata on that file. But actually the check button verifies the status of the files. Maybe using a check symbol would be better.
-
Then we could use the magnifying glass for a new "Analyze" button that would display the metadata.
-
I find the "Clear" button ambiguous. The verb "clean" is used in the contextual menu in Nautilus to "clean metadata". This button is used to remove files from the list of files. Why not renaming it "Remove" and group it visually with the "Add" button which is its counterpart?
(from redmine: created on 2014-06-22, closed on 2015-12-30, relates #7684, blocks #9252 (closed))