Week 3 Outside of Class

Outside of class I read pages 90-95 in Interface Design. Here are my notes:
ICONS: COMPLEX PROCESS MADE EASY

• Icons are interface tools that visually focus attention and communicate, in a concise way, a call to action through an understandable visual metaphor
• Icons need to clearly convey its function to the user
• The image the icon adopts needs to be familiar and instantly recognizable
• The image may be specifically connected to the function or be representational or abstract
• The more specific the image is, the easier it is to connect to the function/action
• If it is obtuse, it will have to be learned by the user
• Meanings are either learned (house = homepage icon) or instantly identifiable (printer = print) by the user
• Too often, interfaces fail because icons are used in navigation without any sense of meaning
• Icons need to convey a call to action, so its imagery needs to stand out from the UI's content without competing with it

METAPHOR AND CONTEXT

• Metaphor is a particularly useful tool in visual communication as it can cut through cross-generational or cross-cultural complexities
• Essentially, it is the transfer of meaning from one object to another
• A suitable UI metaphor is one that explains the function and facilitates action instantaneously 
• It must also be readily understandable, readable, and contextually relevant to a large number of users
• Adding text labels to icons helps optimize usability, as some iconic meaning will take time to learn
• Once an icon's identity and purpose becomes universally accepted, it can live on its own in a UI without labeling
• Visual communication in icons fails when the metaphor or analogy is not clearly understood

DESIGNING ICON FAMILIES

• Due to the utility of an icon, it needs to operate at a variety of scales, at different resolutions and on a variety of screen displays
• The icon must display and communicate at different scales using different number of pixels
• The icon will also need to work at different resolutions of color display
• A 256 color 8-bit version will be needed, as well as a 16 color 4-bit version for lower resolution displays
• In each icon family there will be at least six to eight pieces of artwork that operate at different scales

I also did 30 sketches of my icon.