Following up on our survey on icons in Launchpad, Charline Poirier provides us with the outcome:
Edit 
: High level of understanding, but a strong association with “attention”, “warning”, and “danger”. Might be worth modifying colour or shape to distance the icon from that interpretation.
Merge 
: Reasonable understanding of “merge”. However, participants were not entirely sure if the icon referred to the state ‘merged’ or the branches themselves.
Remove 
: Icon strongly associated with “do not enter” and “delete”. The interpretation “remove” comes only in third place. The icon is strongly evocative and might be better used to designate a more consequential or prohibitive action.
Remote bug 
: A reasonable percentage of respondents understood the “remote bug” icon. Many, however, did not. It appears that the key for interpreting this icon is the representation of the bug itself. Various potential states of a bug were suggested as interpretations. This icon could be made more explicit.
External link 
: Relatively well understood. It is worth noting that the icon has powerful suggestion of globality and reach (associated with translation, languages, internationalization, etc). It is a very evocative icon that could be more fully exploited perhaps in another context.
What next? We’ll attempt to create new versions of the icons, run another session of user-testing, and if understanding improves, Launchpad gets new icons \0/
Martin Albisetti's blog 
Leave a Reply