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All recent skeumorphic vs metaphoric interfaces debates strongly reming me of the almost decade old realistic vs abstract icons discussions. Same arguments of “selling/marketable” vs “serious” and design were made along predictions of who would win in the long run. There's no need to show how desktop Mac OS/Windows icons look today.
Things are looking a bit different on mobile devices. Before 2007 icons used in mobile UI were frequently same realistic 3D style as in desktop. iPhone’s touch UI removed the additional abstraction layer between user input and the interface. Because of that icons were perceived more as as buttons/controls you can directly manipulate than static image hyperlinks. Needless to say iPhone’s icons did look a lot like buttons. Everyone followed: icons became frontal frequently receiving a square/round “container”. It wasn’t mindless copying though, but a self-evident outcome of the new interface paradigm.
Another glimpse to the icons future was the iPhone’s calendar icon showing the actual date. Definitely not the first icon with dynamic content in mobile UI, it stirred a lot of conversations on how “live” icons are the future. Now icons with dynamic content are just hitting mainstream in Windows Phone platform, but we’ll return to that later.
The biggest change for icons is coming not from a new interface paradigm or dynamic content. A lot was said about how floppy disk is an obsolete motif and can’t serve as a quick, intuitive representation of the Save function (to be fair in this example it’s more about the obsolete function than the motif representing it). Plenty of icons are representing real world physical objects connected with a certain functionality. And those physical objects are loosing their original shape or are becoming obsolete. As a result all icons based on real-world objects face extinction or “symbolization”.
For example the phone symbol used on all Phone icon functionality today. You’ll almost never see this iconic handset shape on real world phones, but the shape was “canonized” as a representation of the phone functionality. So the signifier lost its connection to real world object design and became an abstract symbol.
Back to “live” icons. In this presentation of Metro style interface principles there are two slides showing the difference between the “relics of yesterday” and new “digitally authentic” icons.
The comparison is not really convincing. The primary goal of the icon is still to be easily recognized. Displaying the relevant dynamic information is a highly anticipated addition, but not the top priority. With content becoming the new motif instead of real-world objects references how will the icons with similar content provide enough differentiation?
For example the content of a messaging, Twitter or Facebook app is really similar: user thumbnails + corresponding text/pictures. Content can’t totally replace real-world references for icons ensuring same easy function recognition and personality/character. This is valid for interfaces too by the way. Metro UI with its deliberate lack of chrome and (similar looking) content-as-navigation approach does feel kind of insipid as application/hubs/icons look the same at a glance.
It’s quite interesting that the most important functions in Windows Phone (Phone, Messaging and Email) are represented by big symbols and not the dynamic content (persons who called or new messages/mails received). Also content aesthetics/privacy has to be taken into consideration. Imagine a “live” Photo Galley icon that uses the latest captured photo in a frame as the main motif. Imagine that the latest photo is almost completely black. Or better a private one.
What’s next for the icons? The answer lies not in the visual style, but in the nature of the icon itself. In the end I believe the traditional icon concept as electronic hyperlink to application or function will fade away. Along with half-baked concept of widgets as an intermediary between desktop and full screen applications. It will be the application itself that could scale, displaying meaningful and easily recognizable information in different sizes.
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