Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update

2013/2/21 Heiko Tietze <heiko.tietze@user-prompt.com>

> Kévin PEIGNOT-3 wrote
> > Hy Heiko,
> >
> > As I sayed, I changed my mind while color coding the icons, I don't
> > think any more it's such useful (also, if someone really think it's an
> > important thing, only user testing can help us).
> >
> > Anyway, I think having more than one color in the icon palette is
> > important, monochrome would be wrong : LibO is a software with A LOT of
> > icons, and colors (no mater which ones) will help differentiate each of
> > them. It's not like a file explorer toolbar, with few icons, where it's
> > easily possible to choose monochrome. There are plenty of icons (useful
> > or not, it's another subject). So I'm really sure we should use colors.
> > I also think few icons could be color coded, as insert table in writer
> > should be green (the traditional color of tables (excel, calcs etc),
> > but that's a detail.
> >
> > Then, about the icon guidelines, As I sayed to Mirek, we shouldn't
> > choose if we use Gnome ones, Elementary ones, Ubuntu Ones etc, but let
> > users choose that by a survey. Because if surveys are useless for
> > ergonomy (user always choosing , for pure design it helps to know what
> > final user find sexy or not.
> >
> > I would like to have Bjoern thoughts on this, so I CC him.
> >
> > Kévin
>
> To anticipate Bjoern: we'd please to support you :-).
> But what do you expect from a survey? Methodologically, one should draft a
> hypothesis, find questions to reject (sic!) it, and give alternative
> hypothesis the opportunity to promote.
> If you ask users whether or not they like flat/gray icon design you will
> get
> strange and less meaningful results.
> If you run an icon test (as introduced by User Weave) gray icons will get
> lower values - they are not known yet and "lack of" the color identifier.
> For instance, we compared Gnome users to KDE users in our last study and
> their preferences for icons of both set (actually we examined a set and
> asked afterwards about OS). It's not what we discuss in detail but
> basically
> Gnome users make advantage of Tango icons and KDE of Oxygen. Please treat
> this as just my impression but statistical proved results.
> Finally, you could let users compare sets. That's possible, but is this
> really the question you ask?

Yes that's it (sorry, My english is clearly horrible)

The idea of the test wouldn't be to ask users if they like or not the flat
icon set. It would be to present them a few icon sets in situation, perhaps
as if it was screenshots, something like that :
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Symbolic-test.png : a few icons
you see often. We would present them all on the same screen, maybe aligned
one below the other, and we ask them which one they prefer, (generally
speaking, not for a special OS), or to put a note to each one. We should
have Gnome styled icons, maybe KDE styled icons, flat monochromes ones,
flat colored ones, maybe flat icons less rounded, maybe Faenza ones etc ,
and actuals icons maybe etc (this is too choose later), but for each
design, the same icons, with the same symbol have to be used, just the
design change.

I'm not surprised Gnome users prefer Gnome icons, KDE users KDE icons etc
etc. But we don't have to choose the icon set for Gnome users, not anymore
for KDE users or Unity users. But for all our users. That's why we should
make a public survey (just my idea). Then (just a though, you know this lot
better than me if it's useful and possible), ask also each user what OS
they use, to be able to ponderate the results according to our
representative users (If 90% of the answers came from Gnome users, we
should "discriminate" these ones and ponderate users of Windows, as it's
our most important OS (in term of number of users).

> Actually, my question was about the new set in respect to the disabled
> state, i.e. when controls and icons are grayed out. Regardless from any
> design aspect - that's your expertise - I wonder if pure gray is applicable
> at all. You might convince me with the argument (and perhaps a picture)
> that
> buttons/icons get a shadow in light gray which is well perceptible...

Honnestly I'm not sure, but I think, that as these icons are disabled, it's
not very important if the color isn't there any more, and we just have a
lighter grey : the user shouldn't have to use it. Then, removing the color
would put in evidence even more the icon is disabled. If you want I will do
a picture soon (I can't today), with active and inactives icons.

Kévin

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