Printer icons: Design by habit
I really enjoy confusing icons. Not in the sense of “Hey Britney Spears, if I say all interaction designers are liars, and I’m an interaction designer, am I telling the truth or lying?”, but in the sense of noticing icons that communicate absolutely nothing of what they intend to communicate. And worse, when these icons continue to thrive through generations of products through the enduring momentum of design by habit.
Maybe you can help me figure out this example. Check out these common printer icons.
These are Start and Stop icons from various multifunction printers. They include a diamond with a vertical line in the middle to indicate Start and a circle circumscribing an inverted triangle to indicate Stop. It’s obviously a trend. But is it successful? What value do they provide?
Notice the wild variations in usage. Most include the icon on the button itself, while #2 puts the icon adjacent to the label. #5 can’t make up its mind whether they go on the panel or button. #3 and #7 include proud and bold icons while #4 and #5 are subdued and meek. But in all cases, they need the Start and Stop labels because the icons themselves aren’t memorable enough to stand on their own. And if that’s true, why use them at all? Out of pure habit, because everybody else does?
In #3 is the counter-example, the standard Power icon. The design of the Power icon doesn’t communicate “power” on its own. Its origin is a mystery, the subject of many questions and few concrete answers. Nevertheless, through repeated use on many devices, the Power icon is a success. You don’t even need words to accompany it (even though this one does).
Curious, I looked around our office at other devices to see how prevalent these icons were. I found them on our standard Canon and Minolta copiers.
Do you have any theories or ideas where these icons came from? I believe they first appeared on copiers and then evolved over to printers and multifunction devices, but it’s hard to trace the history without seeing the products live. Trust me, Google Images doesn’t work very well for this type of research.
Comment and submit your theories!