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Like on for example a header, would having only icons be confusing for the user, or would having words and icons take up too much space? I think that the icon only design is really clean, but don't know if the users would know what the icons mean.

Here is an example of what I am talking about Example

tinfoilboy
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  • Are you able to use tooltips or something similar, so that the icons are shown but the words are available on request? – BenM May 08 '14 at 04:11
  • Yeah, I could use a title attribute. – tinfoilboy May 08 '14 at 04:12
  • (But do keep in mind that mobile device users won't necessarily have a mouse). – BenM May 08 '14 at 04:16
  • @BenM, I've added an example of the header, do you think people would be able to understand what it is trying to say? (the W on the left is the logo, due to the site being codenamed "Written") – tinfoilboy May 08 '14 at 04:20
  • To be perfectly honest, no, it's not really clear what those icons mean (maybe they'd be clearer in the context of the website, but they're not clear here). This might not even matter too much if they are purely for site navigation, since users could find out what they mean by experimentation. But if one of them's a logout link, for example, I could easily see that leading to frustration. – BenM May 08 '14 at 04:38
  • Yeah, I guess I'll just go and use both text and icons, also is there a way to accept duplicates? Because that thing that @EvilClosetMonkey posted is dead on what I wanted. – tinfoilboy May 08 '14 at 04:51
  • You can up vote the other question and any answers that help you. That gives those folks a virtual kudos. – Nicholas Pappas May 08 '14 at 04:54
  • I need 15 rep to upvote :( why does rep not carry over each stack exchange site? – tinfoilboy May 08 '14 at 04:55
  • Not sure about rep carry over - good question for http://meta.stackexchange.com/. :) You should build enough rep quickly though - you can always provide kudos a little later. :) – Nicholas Pappas May 08 '14 at 05:04

2 Answers2

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Many researchers have shown that icons are hard to memorize and are often highly inefficient. The Microsoft Outlook toolbar is a good example: the former icon-only toolbar had poor usability and changing the icons and their positioning didn’t help much.

From the blog UXMYTHS: http://uxmyths.com/post/715009009/myth-icons-enhance-usability

ashfaq_ayon
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For the navigation items and menu using icons is really nice and clear , but most of the users did not get the exact ideas in the icons, because most of countries and regions used different ways to communicating the ideas, so if you can used icons and fonts both way user can get clear idea.

check this website - ( http://icomoon.io/ ) try to used Typography it's really easy

and bootstrap Glyphicons ( http://getbootstrap.com/components/ )

Lasantha
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