Icons in your Apps
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A 5 minute presentation for developers discussing the use of icons in web and mobile apps.
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Icons in your Apps
- 1. Icons in Your Apps Jayson Ward, UI Engineer Esri Professional Services
- 2. To free up screen real estate. To provide some visual interest. To internationalize our apps.
Editor's Notes
- Hello, my name is Jayson Ward and I work at Esri as a User Interface Engineer, focusing mainly on UI design and front-end development.Today I want to have a rapid discussion with you regarding the use of icons in your apps
- 3. So what are icons and why do we use them in apps.Icons are pictograms that we use to substitute for written words and conceptsWe use them to free up screen real estatesometimes to help provide visual interestand to internationalize our apps.
- So as developers you are probably familiar with these. They are icons in a sense used to represent specific pieces of programming logic. You see them and you recognize them immediately. Graphic icons work the same way.
- So what do you think this button would do? Save? Even though we don’t use floppy disks anymore, you recognize this icon as a button you would use to save, even people who have never seen a 3 1/5” floppy recognize this symbol as save even though they don’t know what the graphic references.
- How about this button?Configuration or settings.
- Now let’s say we have to come up with an icon for share, to let people know they can share content via social media.We could use an icon like this, putting something in someone’s hand. That may convey share, but really isn’t the correct message for the actionWe could use something like this, but once again not everybody is going to get this reference, plus it doesn’t scale wellThe best solution is to use this icon, which has become a defacto standard for sharing via social networksIt’s always best to use whatever has become the standard, whether it makes sense or not -> remember that 3 ½ “ floppy for saving.
- So what are some quick takeaways to think about when using icons in your apps.1. Purchase a set of icons in vector format from a stock photo library. That way you will have a set of icons with a consistent look to use in your projects.
- 2. Use the icon that makes the most sense, or is commonly used.
- 3. Don't use icons that look like they are completely different styles in your apps. that's like using a different typeface for each letter in a sentence; it's jarring to the user experience.
- 3. Always ask yourself, do I even need an icon. Maybe just the word is enough if your audience all speak the same language; like here we could have the phone button, or we could have a button that says Call Us, or even Call Me Maybe.
- Thanks for taking the time to speed geek with me, cheers.