> Imo Text is the clearest thing you can put on a button to tell the user what that button does 'save' 'load' 'new game' etc. Yes, it will need to be translated, but thats simply putting in more work for a better product.
I strongly disagree. I'm looking at my browser chrome right now and if the back, forward, reload, home, and bookmark buttons were displayed as that, it would be _awful_.
Even thinking about my IDE, if IntelliJ said "Class with main method" instead of the little C with play button icon or "Library class for which source is decompiled", it would drive me insane. That's most certainly making a worse product.
It's all about the language you can create and sure, no one is going to learn a new language to play some 2 minute game, but lots of great interfaces require a new language. It's about optimizing for the experienced user instead of the newbie.
Of course there are places where it should be the other way around, but it's not universal.
You already know the meaning of the browser icons as well as you know traffic signs. On the other hand on a unknown setting, like a newly installed app, an icon can represent too many things for a person to guess which is the real semantic of the icon in question.
I strongly disagree. I'm looking at my browser chrome right now and if the back, forward, reload, home, and bookmark buttons were displayed as that, it would be _awful_.
Even thinking about my IDE, if IntelliJ said "Class with main method" instead of the little C with play button icon or "Library class for which source is decompiled", it would drive me insane. That's most certainly making a worse product.
It's all about the language you can create and sure, no one is going to learn a new language to play some 2 minute game, but lots of great interfaces require a new language. It's about optimizing for the experienced user instead of the newbie.
Of course there are places where it should be the other way around, but it's not universal.