Results of KMail Icon Test #2
January 20th, 2010 by Björn BalazsToday I closed the 2nd KMail icon test. This time 1945 people took part. Much less people than the last time, but also the drop-out was much less than last time.
So here are some basic statistics:
- Selected language: English: 1002, German: 476, Spanish: 334, Italian: 76, Polish: 57
- Gender: Male: 99%, Female: 1%
- Average Age: 28,6 years (from 11 to 93)
- Most of the participants are strong KDE users. More than 80% use KDE very frequently. Next is Windows (TM) with more than 25% of frequent users, GNome with about 10% and Mac OS (TM) with about 7%.
- The participants are almost half split in their use of KMail, more than 50% use KMail frequently and about 30% say they never use KMail (the rest in somewhere in between).
In this test we included the icons of two elements of KMail: The icons used in the window and in the message menu of the composer window. These are icons of different size in the standard configuration of KDE, so we presented the icons in the according size and used the KUbuntu translations of the terms associated with them. The overall findings are very good. Most icon-term-relations seem to work out fine. We did not find find any explicitly not working relations, but some still show the potential for improvement.
Icon-Term relations working really well
The following icon-term relations seem to work well. You have to consider that users had to pick from only 8 choices this time, so it was much easier to exclude all the less fitting icons to find the one to choose. But the data of none of the following icons showed any evidence for this.
|
Best Icon |
Rating |
Term |
|
|
10,0 |
Send Later (message menu) |
|
|
10,0 |
Print (message menu) |
|
|
10,0 |
Close (message menu) |
|
|
10,0 |
Attach File (Composer) |
|
|
10,0 |
Cut (Composer) |
|
|
9,8 |
Encrypt Message (Composer) |
|
|
9,8 |
Sign Message (Composer) |
|
|
9,0 |
Copy (Composer) |
|
|
9,0 |
New Main Window (message menu) |
|
|
9,0 |
Paste (Composer) |
|
|
9,0 |
Send Later Via (Composer) |
|
|
8,6 |
Save as Draft (message menu) |
Note that the icons for “cut” and “copy” were quite often mixed up
Icon-Term relations with some room for improvements
For the following term the icons could be improved. There was quite a high missing value for these icons and the icons got associated with some of the other terms. Also the time people took to spot these icons was quite high, which shows that people just chose the best of the not-so-well-fitting icons, not a convincing icon.
|
Best Icon |
Rating |
Term |
|
|
8,0 |
Send Mail (message menu) |
|
|
7,8 |
Send Mail Via (Composer) |
|
|
7,4 |
New Composer (message menu) |
|
|
6,8 |
Insert File… (message menu) |
It is interesting to see that the stamp does not work out well for “sending mails”.
Some closing notes…
We are still looking for people to help to translate the test into different languages. Also people wanting to help setting up these icon tests are warmly welcome, as my time is very limited and I do not get to publish new tests and the results as often as I would like to… And of course anyone interested in investigating the results in greater depth is warmly welcome. Just drop me a mail…
January 20th, 2010 at 19:59
I was missing the option “none of these icons suit the task at hand, all of them are confusing”. That’s what I’d pick for all of the “with room for improvement” icons, but I choose one lest confusing because I had to choose something (or the UI suggested so).
January 20th, 2010 at 20:21
Completely agreed, I had exactly the same problem.
January 20th, 2010 at 20:59
if no icon suits i think i was able to just click next without selecting an icon
January 20th, 2010 at 22:04
> It is interesting to see that the stamp does not work out well for “sending mails”.
Lol, I never recognized it as a stamp. It looked like some kind of gallery image to me. I recognize it as send button because I’m seeing it all day.
January 20th, 2010 at 22:37
I took the survey, and the results roughly correspond with my impressions except for the “sign e-mail.” Once I understood it was a pen, it made sense, but in fact it is such a light/gray icon it was difficult for me to perceive what it even was at first.
January 20th, 2010 at 22:38
I didn’t know it was a stamp. I use KMail daily and I didn’t recognize it as the send button. I guess I just press the leftmost icon
January 20th, 2010 at 23:48
I did not recognize the stamp as one, either. As Diderik said, it may look more like a gallery image. Highly confusing and IMHO not appropriate for “send”.
The signing icon worked well for me.
Thank you for doing these surveys, I believe they can help usability a lot. Keep it up!
January 21st, 2010 at 0:47
If it was allowed not to select anything, it should’ve been clearly stated somewhere. I did not try not to select anything, for I had the impression that I *had* to make a choice. (This is a usability blog, right? :p)
Also, even though I did recognize the picture of a stamp and I used to send postcards several times a year, I saw no link between “sending an e-mail” (a quick process which does not cost anything) and “stamping a letter” (which is very different from actually submitting it to mail delivery guy/post drop box).
January 21st, 2010 at 2:09
Is that what it is? A stamp? I thought it was a window with a night sky background behind it.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:35
Never realized it was a stamp!
January 21st, 2010 at 23:31
I took the test and most of the best-matching icons correspond to my choices, except of the Print icon. It doesn’t look like a printer to me (maybe because it is so tiny).
The problem with many icons is that they lack contrast and they use a lot of white and gray, so they blend with buttons’ background. The “Sign Message (Composer)” icon is the worst one IMO - it looks bad on both white and gray (it looks like a gray smugde in worst cases). Sadly, it seems to be a general trend in Oxygen icons, which are otherwise quite nicely designed. Give them more contrast and, in some cases, more color, and you will have one of the best icon suites!
January 26th, 2010 at 18:35
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