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You're reading from  101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inMay 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803234885
Edition2nd Edition
Concepts
User Experience
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Author (1)
Will Grant
Will Grant
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Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant

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Always Give Icons a Text Label

Now, I don’t mean text on the icon (see #37, Never Use Text on Icons)—I mean a text label near the icon, not just an icon on a button on its own.

Small, nondescript buttons, with obscure mystery icons on them, are next to useless and consistently perform terribly in user tests.

Always Give Icons a Text Label

Figure 38.1: Which is easier to understand?

Let’s go back to the original purpose of an icon—to provide a quick visual shorthand by which the user can instantly recognize a control, and to provide a target for the user to click or tap. The icon isn’t meant to describe a button the first time that the user sees it—the user will need a text label for that. However, if the icon is distinct and recognizable, then the user will locate the control and recall its purpose more quickly with it.

Our old favorites, the Nielsen Norman Group, have a great shortcut for this, the “5-second rule”:

If it takes...

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101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition
Published in: May 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803234885
© 2022 Packt Publishing Limited All Rights Reserved

Author (1)

author image
Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant

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