Cloud Watching

Have you ever stared at the clouds and seen faces, scenes, or other recognisable patterns in them? Perhaps you’ve had a go at ink-blots (Rorschach Inkblots)and had your psyche judged on the weirdness of the result?

The best willed Search results in a load of hocus-pocus around why we see what we believe we see in ink blots and clouds, towels hanging on the back of a door in the dark, etc., but there are proper foundations in the science of perception that allow us to rationalise our brain's desire to see what may not be there.

Think of a “first look, first kill” philosophy of fighter jets; then, on reaching a shared understanding with me, imagine an early human-type thinking they’ve just seen a leopard (or Sabre-Toothed tiger!!). “I think I just saw a puddy-cat”, as Tweety would claim. If this first impression, the initial perception was ignored the true encounter with the predating beast could be quite short-lived and end in a smelly deposit of cat pooh. However, if the early person-type took flight it may:

1. Escape predation.
2. Flush out said predator and make an informed decision to scarper.

So, perhaps we are attuned to rapid perception. It may have been a necessity. It still is, in reality. Taken in the broader spectrum of semiotics our rapid and correct interpretation of a look flashed across our lover’s or boss’ face might make a huge difference in our stress level for the remains of the day – or your married life. When driving, our recognition of hazards (whether advertised by signs or interpreted through experience or the environmental changes) is essential to our safe progression at the National speed limit. We learn to recognise some signs (signs in the broadest sense) and we instantly perceive threat (or stimuli) from others.

Applied to the design of icons for graphic user interfaces (GUI) the anticipation of what might be perceived as a way-marker, warning, or enticement must make the resulting graphics more successful in their rapid cognition and correct interpretation?

So, cloud watching is a good illustration of why we need careful design of out Learning Icons™ but not a cause of it. Cloud watching our GUI and Learning Icons™ will lead to a mix of interpretations and the idea is that they lead to only one concise meaning – unless they are context sensitive, in which case they still need to be concise but in their relevant setting or syntax.

If we consider that there are people for whom the recognition of a sequence of letters interspaced as words with individual and grouped meaning dependent on the context or text of their use then we can assume these people will be slower to cognate copy (text, print, writing, etc.) than the average or gifted reader. This group of people used to be considered to be a minority only because the majority of them dropped out of school into menial labour when compared to those with good reading and writing ability who went on to buy expensive houses in posh cul-de-sacs where the poorer-achieving majority were seldom seen (except on Tuesdays to take away the rubbish – but the interaction was pretty poor considering our achievers were either at work or still in bed on a day off, following a night shift, or when playing hooky ready for BBC2’s Wimbledon coverage).

I digress. Anyway, imagine we can appeal to these poorer reader’s sense of survival by providing icons that are deliberately designed to be either recognised easily – or learned to be recognised easily: to be quickly cognated? The problem is determining what will work best: simple uncomplicated iconic forms, or indexical pictograms? Do we propose what will work, or do we consult with the users and test the results until we either reach our Pot-Noodle (tasteless, maybe, but hugely successful, according to Ben Elton in, “Air”) or mediate a solution for most of the people most of the time?

This project is to explore the foundations of the creation of icons for learning, Learning Icons™. The icons need to be useful. They need to be placed in sequences, to have individual as well as group meaning that may change according to context or ‘text’. Their GUI design needs to be intuitive and fit to purpose across a range of users or within a specified range of users. There will not be a single Learning Icon™ design, I’m sure. There will be variety according to the need and ability of the user, the intention of the learning provider, and the fashions of design abound at the time of their development.

Let’s not forget, although some navigational GUI icons have been sustained for some 20-odd years, their actual appearance has changed quite dramatically. Yes, we had clothes 20-years ago, but our clothes are still clothes, as icons are still icons, but the technology behind textiles as well as GUI design has moved on along with our and commerce’s preferences, or fashion.

I tried a clothing analogy and chose not to use it originally as many of our clothing fashions are returning to their routes of the past as fresh ideas of how to cover our essential bits (or to accentuate them) continue to allude our designers. I also tried cars: same problem – although there are more bells and whistles and choices of trim and additional-cost technologies, they tend to still have 4-wheels (yes, 5 with the steering wheel) and a body shell, which although ‘modern’ is increasingly reliant on car shapes from the past – or the desire to have personal rocket cars in the garage during the 50’s and 60’s (1st Ford Cortinas and Consuls).

So too with icons. You don’t like my icon design today? Maybe, just maybe you will love them in 10-years’ time?

I bring this fashion point up because of my own challenged prejudices. I like uncluttered simple icon designs, so clever they work. They may take a furrowed brow at first, but once informed of their specific meaning in that specific context or ‘text’ you’ll go, “oh, yeah!” The fashion (thanks to greater processing power) is to have larger and more elaborate and, in the case of Microsoft Vista icon, beautiful pictograms: even user-activated animated or video-shoe-horned multi-media devices. Gorgeous.

I am therefore doggedly following my own preference in the visual design of my prototype Learning Icons™. It doesn’t really matter if they work; if the user agrees they mean what they should and seldom mean what they shouldn’t.

A caution though. I developed two icons to mean one or two rescuers (first aiders). I lived with them throughout their initial design and user-testing and loved them. On showing them to two new observers last week, one (Simon, you git) said, “I know what that one is before you tell me, Pat. It’s an ‘i’ for ‘information’.” I looked down at my paper model of a Learning Icon™ that could be used in a face-to-face learning environment, all beautifully crafted, colourfully printed, and diligently cut out to stand up on its own, icon to its face and textual explanation of its meaning and context within. He was right. It was not a stylized body with a head deliberately disembodied, but it was an ‘i’ for ‘information’.

What was interesting was that the single-person / rescuer icon had been derived from the 2-rescuer and multiple rescuer icons developed earlier. I had missed something through my own clouded perception formed from habit over only a matter of minutes. I had learned what the "i" had meant as representing a person and accepted the single "i" as such, completely ignoring my culteral learning to see it as the "i" of information.

No matter how clever you think you are at this game (and I am getting to be clever) I think that, while the meaning of an intended icon design is pre-ordained by the matter of its being designed to denote an aspect of the user’s learning, it will seldom mean the same thing to everyone all of the time. This results in three findings (a good ol' traditional semiotic triad):

1. Icons should be labelled (at least when first encountered)
2. Icons need to link to a glossary.
3. Icons will still never mean exactly what you want until you explain what they mean.

You have a furrowed brow, my casual lay-reader. And you, the experts! You're nodding knowingly, I can tell.

Here’s an example. Think of the sign for a male toilet (not a toilet with a willy, but a toilet, ablution, or washroom designed for gentlemen and esquires to empty their bladders and bowls in – into toilets, not onto the floor, at least outside London and Glasgow).

The sign you will think of in the UK, and across much of the World will be of a symbol for a man; a bloke. It may have additional attire such as lederhosen or a Trilby hat, but it’ll essentially be a bloke.

What’s it actually mean? It means, “man”. A girlie one with a skirt/dress would mean, “woman”. Male or female. Yet, in these days of open sexuality and hedonistic desires to express cross-gender freedoms or to avoid fungal infections between testicles and thighs, neither sign can actually be relied upon to represent the silhouetted shape of a man or woman anymore. That aside, (a sigh from the most Politically Correct among you) is the fact that the symbols do not indexically represent a toilet or urinal. They have been learned to represent the appropriate washroom / toilet to use according to our society’s current understanding of a gender type-cast.

My argument? The design of icons is, perhaps, less important than we think. Perhaps, in the same way we recognise a dress, car, or toilet door sign, the icon will need to be learned at some point in our educational journey through time and space. Then the challenge is to make that learning process as efficient as we can so as to avoid overly burdening our busy learner with learning anything much more complicated than the subject they’ve chosen to study in the first place.

This is my argument for simple, clear, and concise use of shapes in the icon design. You may differ; you may illustrate to me how wrong I might be. At this moment though, I am content this is the immediate solution to staying on track with my exploration of the Learning Icon™ as a learning device in eLearning as well as in the classroom. I don’t want to be overly-burdened with any more on the aesthetic design, but only now on the cognitive and GUI design of the icons.

Prettier icons can be left to the graphicist professionals. May I be one, one day, too.