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Semiotics

Caveats

Most if not all pages are just rough notes, and these pages as a whole are far from complete. More notes will be added in time, eventually, maybe.

If, from reading these notes, you conclude that I am off my rocker, you won’t be the first, and you may even be right.

No doubt there are a dozen and one reasons why none of this would ever work, but perhaps somewhere deep down there is a tiny fragment that could be used for something.

Contents

Standard symbols

There is a lot of ambiguity in the semiotics of computer systems. For example, take the following symbol:

This symbol can represent any of:

The same interface may (as with Connectwise PSA) use the exact same symbol in the same window (or on the same page) for completely unrelated purposes.

Likewise, a rotated chevron has no defined meaning either:

This symbol can represent any of:

(A button that shows a menu should close the menu if the menu is already open, but all too often will close and immediately re-open it.)

Any of the following symbols may represent a menu:

Note that the “hamburger menu” symbol can also be used to collapse the side panel. “New Outlook” does this: the “hamburger menu” symbol that looks like it will open the menu bar merely collapses the left side panel, leaving the user confused as to where exactly they are meant to look to find the actual menus (of which there are none).

Although there is nothing that can be done to stem the tide of stupidity, within the OS each task must have a dedicated symbol, allowing the user to know at all times what the outcome of clicking any symbolic control will do.

Note that this has important ramifications for themes, because symbols will in some cases be theme specific, e.g. slide, expand/contract or scrolling. Although one could argue that symbols need only be consistent within a theme (allowing for example a Mac-like theme), this introduces a critical requirement that stock symbols exist in a library so that anyone designing a new theme can trivially re-use all the stock symbols semantically (not merely visually). Software that introduces custom controls, especially custom compound controls, also needs to be able to incorporate, semantically, stock symbols.

Standard icons

Save

“Save” has for decades typically been represented by an icon of a 3.5″ diskette. These icons are frequently so poorly drawn as to only bear a passing resemblance to the actual item, an object that younger generations will have no living memory of.

The question: should a new, more universally meaningful icon be chosen? If yes, what on earth would it look like?