Information tips can clarify complex UIs, but they should not hide essential information, trigger redundant information, or disrupt the current workflow.
Contextual menus reduce clutter and interaction cost but have low information scent. Prioritize clarity, consistency, and proximity to balance the tradeoffs.
Users still recognize the floppy disk icon as ‘save,’ but evolving workflows mean it may no longer be the clearest or most appropriate choice in many cases.
Distinguishing between these two actions is critical to avoiding losing users’ work. Save changes before closing a view, use text labels rather than an X icon, and provide a confirmation dialog before destructive actions.
Related links are often chunked as a set, each with an icon. One bad icon hurts user interaction. A set of bad icons is worse because it amplifies confusion, adds clutter, and wastes screen real estate.
Users are 37% faster at finding items within a list when visual indicators vary both in color and icon compared to text alone. If choosing between using color or an icon, icons with strong information scent perform better than color alone.
A user’s understanding of an icon is based on previous experience. Due to the absence of a standard usage for most icons, text labels are necessary to communicate the meaning and reduce ambiguity.
People usually recognize that a magnifying-glass icon indicates a search tool, even when it has no label. Unfortunately, showing only the icon makes search more difficult to find.