Minggu, 20 Januari 2013

Icons which are meaningless to (most) people today

Nowadays, too many people in young ages use computers, be it a laptop, smart phone or tablet. Yet, the software are still using icons which are only meaningful to older people. How old? It depends. The line is drawn until a certain person knows or has access to the technology or the metaphors represented by the icons.

Let's see one by one. Note: the icons are not mine, they are from openclipart.org and wikipedia.

Floppy disk for Save

When was the last time you saw this old man's USB stick? Maybe never. Yet, the floppy disk is still used to represent save operation.




Phone handset for Phone


When was the last time you saw this handset? Maybe we still have this in some countries, but I haven't seen it in the last 3 countries I visited in last 3 years (except in museum).




Magnetic tape reel for voice mail

Did you see Mission Imposible TV series in the 1960s? Then you are familiar with the magnetic tape reel :D But how come the object become the voice mail icons?






Hourglass for waiting

This may make sense for most people, but maybe not. In another hand, hourglass shows remaining time left, and not to say that you need to wait. Even if you use hourglass in your apps which the audience is toddlers or kids, maybe they will not get it immediately and will start to hit and punch the device when they're tired of waiting.



Desk calendar for calendar

This is another rarely seen object around the house. If you have the days and dates shown on the icon maybe it is fine, but if just shows tables, maybe it is not.





Rolodex for address book


I personally never seen this in real life, so I event did not get what this thing suppose to mean :D














But hey, we forgot the most important thing. Do we need to keep them or replace them? If we want to replace, replace with what?