Best practice ideas in UI and icon design
Lukas Mathis has written a short but insightful piece on the idea that simple designs for icons and action related UI makes more sense. His conclusions also reminded me of some of the studies done on faces and body shape as it relates to attractiveness. The retention of juvenile characteristics or Neoteny suggests that the retaining the basic look or shape of the child or immature version has the outcome of making it more attractive to our visual brains.
A great example of this is the evolution of the Mickey Mouse character. In 1978, Stephen Jay Gould theorized that Walt Disney and his animators gradually discovered what it took evolutionary psychologists decades to prove: that baby-like features and proportions elicit an “automatic surge of disarming tenderness” in adults.
Simple UI or icons offer more inferred information as opposed to prescriptive. The simpler the icons the more likely we are to throw them into a general category instead of wondering which action or quality to ascribe to them. As Lukas Mathis points out, “People are confused by symbols if they have too many or too few details. They will recognize UI elements which are somewhere in the middle.”
Cameron James
Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here
rmbanfield
Hi Cameron, the menu bar shouldn't influence the search engines unless you are using a complicated javascript that would prevent their robots from indexing your menu. The most important elements to consider for search optimization are title tags, URL structure, descriptions and your page content.
James Fabritti
Very interesting.
We just finished a related article at the Job Crowd Blog entitled “Avatar creation guide: Selling yourself and your services online”. The article focuses on best practices for presenting yourself online when using avatars. Check it out at http://blog.jobcrowd.com/avatar-creation-guide-selling-yourself-and-your-services-online/.
Hope you enjoy.