The best icon is a text label
I remember getting into a debate about this subject with a self-described UI expert. It was part enlightening and part frustrating. He failed to see the point that so many of his ideas were US-centric, and didn&#x27;t make sense in any context outside of English-speaking languages, and to be honest, they barely made sense in English. The author brings up Gmail, which has an icon for &quot;archive&quot; that makes zero sense no matter how I try to connect the dot, but at least Gmail gives you and out: turn the confusing icons to text.<p>Despite being a programmer -- but not front end work -- I find myself struggling more and more with UI and especially icons. I think so much of it reflects the current trend of zero empathy for the end-user. Fortunately, I know enough about computers to get around many of these issues, but icons are the one area that I still struggle with.<p>Unless you have some site with several million users, teaching end-users is a wasted effort, and it does well to either piggy-back on other ideas or use text. Even Facebook is using text, and it seems a little odd that anyone smaller would feel they have some lessons to teach the end-user about UI. UI, in my opinion, doesn&#x27;t mean &quot;pretty,&quot; it means &quot;usable,&quot; which is sort of implied by U meaning &quot;user.&quot; If a significant portion of your user-base is computer illiterate, which will often be the default, it does well to UI to the lowest common denominator. Once your user presses the back button because your icons made them feel stupid, you lost a customer, and that is a very high price for &quot;pretty.&quot;