Graphics in lines of text?

Subject: Graphics in lines of text?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com, patrick_a_brady -at- hotmail -dot- com
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 10:17:41 -0500

Patrick Brady wondered: <<Recently, a marketing person suggested we insert a small thumbnail in the text of the actual button that a user pushes. So, instead of "Press Enter," it would be "Press (then you'd see the graphic of the key)". He wants this throughout our manuals.>>

For text buttons, such as Enter and Tab, a graphic adds very little to the clarity or efficiency of the communication. But for buttons that are iconic, such as "that thingum that looks kinda like a bug smashed on the windscreen of a car, or maybe a dyspeptic octopus, and it's colored sort of green, sort of blue", the graphic is clearly easier to recognize. Those kinds of graphics do a great job of communicating, and should be used more often.

BTW, we're only half a dozen messages into this thread, and I've already seen replies along the lines of "what does a marketing person know?" While I'm among the first to be skeptical of marketeers, I'd also note that it's prejudicial to ignore anything they say by wrote, and that many of them came up through the trenches as technical writers. That's the long way of saying that it's easier to work with them than against them, particularly when they're right.

<<We're resisting this request. First, it plays havoc with line spacing...>>

It doesn't inevitably affect line spacing. You can often shrink a graphic to the size of the surrounding text without compromising its legibility. As well, most software lets you select inline graphics and change their leading to zero or a negative value so that the text doesn't wrap around it. A nice compromise, if your layout permits, is to display the icon in the white space at the margin. Readers learn to look there if they don't automatically recognize the name of the button. (Of course, an overabundance of icons can make the book resemble paper used to line the bottom of a parrot cage, so use the approach with some discretion.)

<<we don't think our users need it (the marketing person is telling us about 'eye movement' studies, and saying how much easier it is to comprehend)>>

They're right--at least partially--and it's refreshing to see someone applying the results of research to make the user's life better. Encourage them! Among other things, Marketeers are higher up on the pecking order than we are, and it's very useful to have one on your side in certain situations.

It's always easier to recognize the image of a graphic than it is to translate a textual description into a visual image, then seek that image and hope that your mental image matches what's actually in the interface. Don't forget, the "Enter" key is obvious, but very few people recognize "the adjust leading for graphics but not text" icon on sight, particularly if this icon isn't used frequently.

Try this amusing trick if you don't believe me*: Rearrange the icons on a colleague's desktop (or more sinister still, in a toolbar in Word) and watch their dismay as they try to find a favorite icon. Turns out, most of us writers types (being primarily textual rather than graphical in our visual skills) give up on recognizing the shape of an icon, and learn to click at a certain position on the screen instead. The power of visual communication does have its limitations!

* Okay, _I_ was amused. Don't try this on people with no sense of humor--or on people with a much better sense of humor than yours and who might be tempted to revenge. <g>

<<and, since many of our manuals are translated, we fear major problems if we insert graphics within the text.>>

If you're going to all the trouble of translating, surely the graphics get translated too? It shouldn't be an enormous burden to create new screenshots of the graphics of the buttons; in my experience, with SnagIt, it takes far less than 1 minute per button, and that's on a slow network where much of the delay is in saving the image to disk. Managing a few dozen more translated graphics shouldn't be an onerous burden for your translators.

--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)





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