Redesigning the Save Icon and Rethinking Interaction Metaphors
Over at Branch.com, there’s a great discussion going on about Redesigning the Save Icon. A few interaction design experts are all weighing in on the topic. Some ideas are awesome, and some aren’t much better than what we have now. The reason for the discussion? My daughter is now two years old. She’ll never see a floppy disk in real life. Kids that were born in the late 90’s have probably never seen one either (or at least used one). Apple released an iMac in 1998 without a floppy disk. By 2007, only 2% of computers sold still contained a floppy drive.
Sure, even kids who’ve never seen a floppy disk know what the save icon is for. They understand that when you click it (or touch it… from now one, I’m just saying press it), your computer will save your work. But as we get further from the days when floppy disks were actually a thing, the association becomes weaker. That’s the issue with skeuomorphic icons, no matter what their purpose. Eventually those items are no longer relevant. That means boxes, folders, vices, zippers or file cabinets are not really viable alternatives to the floppy disk.
The other issue arises when it’s no longer your computer saving your work, or the entire save paradigm changes as we move more toward local AND cloud storage of all documents. Today, the idea of saving a static copy of a document is almost foreign. New versions of Word, Google Apps, and other productivity packages do a great job of offering a versioning environment much like git or other VCS. So the question is, does “save” still work when describing what that icon does? In my opinion, no, it doesn’t. Read More…
