Before reading “ The Floppy Disk Means Save & 14 Other Old People Icons That Don’t Make Sense Any More”, I realized that I took icons very for-granted because, in a way, they were learned details to me. When I’m on the computer or on the phone, similar icons appear on the devices and applications but I am able to seamlessly navigate throughout and carry out my desired actions. In a way, it helps that the icons just make sense… For example, an airplane icon on my iPhone means ‘Airplane Mode’, I usually use it when I’m getting on a flight so I don’t mess with the other signals during my trip. Otherwise, occasionally I see hacks for airplane mode to be useful when you want to undo or cancel a message being sent really fast.
To write my reflection, I chose to review the icons that I interact with on my phone every day. I’ve sketched them in the image above but I will further detail them here.
- lock/unlock — this icon is at the top of my phone on the lock screen because it indicates whether or not my phone is accessible. Because I have an iPhone X with the new fancy face recognition, when the phone detects my face, it will unlock. When unlocked, I just need to swipe up to use my phone normally. Otherwise, a lock icon shows that it might not have recognized my face and I should enter in my number code instead.
- flashlight — on the bottom left of the lock screen is a flashlight icon. When pressed the back flashlight will turn on and I can use my phone as a flashlight to see between 1–3 feet in front of me. There’s also a cute animation that goes without notice when the button is pressed (similar to a real flashlight).
- camera — this one is pretty self-explanatory. The camera icon appears on the bottom right of the lock screen as well as on an application on the phone menu. When I click on it, I get to take selfies!
- calculator — this icon brings me to a basic calculator to reassure myself that I can do simple math or help me when I’m panicking to fill out a dinner tip. Pro tip: rotating my phone gives me a scientific calculator if I wanted to do more fancy trigonometry.
- bars — the bars on the top of my screen indicate how much signal I have on my phone to make a call. When I was little, I thought they were staircases. Realistically I think they’re supposed to be like a bar chart because the signal is stronger/bigger with more bars.
- wifi signal — this one looks like radio waves because the wifi comes from a route as radio signals. As it moves outwards, it expands.
- battery — the battery icon looks just like an AA battery that you would find it other non-smart devices. The cool thing about this icon is that it usually will show a percentage or number of bars left so I know how much battery I have to do non-sense on my phone.
- search — this icon is a magnifying glass and it’s pretty much universal across many of the research I did for my wireframes. It makes sense because when you’re searching for something, it’s best to channel your inner Sherlock Homes and find the small details.
- speaker — this is represented with a big microphone and as discussed in the article, 14-year-olds aren’t familiar with this but it’s been accepted across devices that you speak into a microphone as an input to a device.
- alarm clock — alarm clocks that ring bells and have arms to tell time are super old-fashion now. We’d be lucky to find people using digital clocks as alarms instead of relying on their phones; I'm guilty of this but it’s much easier to use my phone because that way, I don’t have to change my clock for daylight savings.
- do not disturb — this is represented with a moon because… When you go to bed you don’t want to be disturbed? I used this when I go to bed so that I’m not constantly getting notifications sent to my phone when I should be sleeping.
