Around 10 years ago I thought they were a terrible practice. A win for graphic designers that wanted simple and nice looking at the expense of usability.
But over time people learn and its standard. And as the NN group article points out: it has become familiar and known today.
My favorite iteration of this was in the This American Life mobile app that used a graphic of an actual hamburger instead of 3 stacked gray lines. This was also about 10 years ago I believe. Unfortunately I can't find any reference or graphic depicting it.
The problem is not only do all text labels have different sizes in one language, they also have completely different unrelated sizes in other languages.
Standardized icons can be laid out easily regardless of language
the RTL languages are also a pain point, and even German can make your UI designing difficult for length of words. Really, the high variability of width for i18n'ed words in general is I think where the icon-heavy approach originated.
Sort of. 上 means both up and previous, 下 means down and next. Maybe there was miscommunication about contexts when the button meant next and when it meant down in the UI.
No it isn't. That's why hieroglyphics became indecipherable for nearly 2000 years, while all the various alphabetic systems invented during that time--and many of those invented long before--remained readable.
Yes, that's the obvious reason for it, but having a reason doesn't make the icons any more comprehensible. Good luck using those appliances if you're a visitor who doesn't have the manuals and hasn't learned each manufacturer's unique iconography.
That's depends very much on age, class, geographic location. Someone could have grown up imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, hence learning Russian as a second language. Nonetheless they deserve appliances, websites and infrastructure which they can use and understand.
But the designs literally go from bad to good once people know how to use them. Unlike war, which is bad whether people are used to it or not. If you're insisting the hamburger design is bad for some other reason rather than people not knowing how to use it, it's the same mistake the designers made in the first place when they insisted it was good despite people not knowing how to use it.
> go from bad to good once people know how to use them
perhaps, but there is still the issue or cognitive load in certain designs or combination of designs even if people are used to them, which can objectively make them 'better' or 'worse' vs others
But over time people learn and its standard. And as the NN group article points out: it has become familiar and known today.
My favorite iteration of this was in the This American Life mobile app that used a graphic of an actual hamburger instead of 3 stacked gray lines. This was also about 10 years ago I believe. Unfortunately I can't find any reference or graphic depicting it.