Learning Icon™ - Why an Icon?

A Warm Up

This week, a great friend of mine who still allows me to speak of Learning Icons™ took a meaningful breath and leaned across from his comfortable chair over our tea and toast. With a concerned and sincere look on his face he quietly asked, “Why icons?”

I realised that I have not really explained that in this blog although I do have many great references regarding visualizations in learning (see Google; it’s about the only search string that turned up trumps).

Now, I know there may some disadvantages listed for icons, but I can’t help but notice these disadvantages are very pertinent to icons appearing in your software menu bars but I believe the same cannot apply solidly to an icon that performs a higher function than denoting a button. “Press me here” just doesn’t cut it along side a “check out this concept” Learning Icon™. So I’ll stick to the positives while blogging in here, if you don’t mind. If you want some icon bashing try out the “Problems With Icons” dit at this link. But do remember the function of the Learning Icon™ really is different.

There’s loads of great information out there on semiotics (the science of signs and symbols), syntax, linguistics, design, visualization etc., but I don’t want to bore you with references and research here on this page.

My aim is to help you to understand, or to refresh your opinion, that icons can be used in learning because it’s logical, natural, and all round a great idea and that common preconceptions of icons being only virtual buttons on a screen are worth only second-hand pants*.

Back to Icons Being Great

Icons are present not only in our everyday graphics user interface (GUI) such as the MS Windows operating system, Web pages, or other software, but all around us in advertising, on domestic appliances, in our cars, on the back of coaches, on service station signs, in airports, railway and bus stations, in the back of the settee (!!!), and in far more places than I care to list because my fingers are tired already.

Icons convey meaning easily. Verbs are difficult to get right it seems, but nouns seem easy. Icons also work across culture and language to some degree, though without care in design there may be confusion out of context.

Icons can also be placed in sequences to convey wider meaning and, like English words; their meaning can change subtly according to their text or syntax. [Intended IMAGE (gents sign and sign for a man) – as in people carried in a lift].

Also, in the case of people with learning differences or other cognitive reasons why reading text can be difficult icons can be easier to interpret or learn. Words can change meaning within sentances according to their text or context, but icons can more readily change their meaning by changing their shape, colour, or other style signature.

Icons can save space where text could otherwise eat it up and in repeated appearances icons are more acceptable than repeated words or sentences where we get so hung up on grammar rules we can’t always sit easily when the rules appear to have been broken. (How many times have you read “had had” in a book and had to re-read it to ensure the meaning was correct?)

Icons are visualizations, which are used in everyday life including education and advertising. Both areas affect the way we behave or think – a great advantage to girls shopping or still studying (don’t get all PC-uppity, there’s good research to suggest women are advantaged over men in these skills, o who’s to say it’s not due to a better reception to visualization?), which must prove something.

Of course, like visualizations, icons can date quickly. A common example from reading is the floppy-diskette GUI icon denoting, “to save” a file. I can’t use floppies at work and some of my younger colleagues (I’m sure) giggle coyly or snigger in a demeaning fashion as I pull out or even mention a floppy di… See? You’re off on that already. Similarly, if we were using Learning Icons™ in eLearning, icons will need to be kept up to date with the course content, overall presentation style, etc.

Icons are also easy to operate if they are interactive. They can have roll-over effects applied to them and they can be dragged and dropped around the screen in formative and summative assessment or in simple “copy me” activities, etc.

Good, or well-designed icons may even be easy to recall from memory. We are made in a way that allows almost instant recognition of outlines, colours, and key shapes because we used to need to rapidly know if the shape in the bushes was something we wanted to run after or run away from. A delay in either choice could spell out either hunger or supper for either party.

Icons and their component symbols can be concatenated within sequences, algorithms, or other ontological layout structure.

The speed of recognition of well-rehearsed icons can even speed up the signalling of instructions to people. Try explaining the workings of a washing machine to a bloke! No, you’re right forget it. Just add a couple of simple-to-workout icons on the dial and off he goes proudly wagging his tail because he finally got something right – if he didn’t mix the colours with the sensitive whites…

You don’t Believe Me? Try and Example

Seriously, paint the following onto a large board and flash it in front of a large executive car as it is driven down the motorway, “Slow down, there’s a road-rozzer around the corner flashing lazers at those exceeding the speed limit”. The car is travelling very fast.

This particular type of car will likely be in the middle lane and being a pedestrian on a motorway can earn you as many points as speeding, so let’s keep this in our heads now, okay? Anyway, if the text is large enough for Mr BMW-driver to read it he’ll either misinterpret the message, ignore the message and cuss you for being a pedestrian (“humf. Bad enough in the bloomin’ city, never mind on my motorways”), or take so long trying to read the thing and then work out what it means he’d be long past the road-rozzer before, behind a furrowed brow would come an expletive used after the watershed on Channel 4.

Next, use an image. There’s an example alongside here. In case it doesn’t load for technical reasons or because you still have dial-up it’s a speed-trap lazer. Now you know what it represents you’ll probably critique it as being totally crap, but at least if you saw it in another page of this blog you’d like as not recognise it? Well, Mr BMW driver would be 90% certain to misunderstand this, or ignore it if he couldn’t work it out in the context of the motorway and his excessive speed, or he can just make out the outline of a panda car down the tarmac. Not much good, this icon, then?

Ah-ha, I say. How about the one here? It’s words. It uses (UK) motorway sign colouring of blue with white surround making it attractive as an official sign. It’s written in similar white font, too. I reckon it’d work well. If you don’t agree, how about the one below. It’s got a red surround and cautionary yellow background or field with black contrasting font. They are the same words.

I’d hope you’d agree that one of the last two signs is likely more effective than a great speech-representative text?

Punch Line

So, are the text signs still icons? Why not? Are words and letters not just symbols, too? What’s the point here, then? I think it’s that I’m asking you to re-open your mind on what an icon is like my friend who asked, “Why icons?”

I hope you’ll have repeated my friend’s, “Ah, I see.”

Summary

Icons are great at imparting information and can easily be employed in learning as visualizations and as Learning Object-style devices in the form of Learning Icons™.

Icons don’t have to be full of symbols or made of complex images suited to larger thumbnails (becoming all the rage) but can be text-based, too.

Icons can be used in sequences to form a wider meaning.

Footnotes

*For International visitors. Pants are not trousers or leggings, strides, or Jeans but underwear. I refer, of course to soiled pants worn throughout a hot Summer’s day after a night on a curry following drinking water from a dodgy tap or fawcet / faucet, or drinking far too much real ale**).

**”If you feel the bottom is dropping out of your World, drink real ale and feel the World dropping out of your bottom***”.

***(USA) “Ass”. But then the joke’s not so funny, which is why Brits think the Yanks have no sense of humour. It’s unfair, I know, but the evidence is plain to see.