joerichards
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

Just discovered this medium channel, cool!

I had suspected the normalisation of Android icons would happen soon enough — it always felt as thought it was too good to be true that developers would be allowed to be freely creative with their icons.

But I agree that actually another way of looking at it is that then leaves the developer with too much responsibility that they do not want, and look at the mess that occurred in 2012! I would however like to present another argument.

As someone with a learning difficulty and who is a highly visual learner, I switched to Android from iOS a while ago, because the UI just felt more comfortable, useable, and just more like me. Over the past few months I’ve realised why that is. iOS is just *too* uniform and strict, kind of depressingly so. Android is much more free, creative and reflects my brain a bit more, in being able to customise the layout more, or having variation across screens and icons in more dimensions than just colour/content, but in shape and outline. The visual noise is actually *less*, because there is not unnecessary uniformity.

I notice myself now actually *blurring* my eyes to find the app I want. I open a screen and when they all look too similar my brain gets confused and can’t select an icon — I blur my eyes, and immediately, the one I need pops out — and what is it thats identifying it? The colour, and the shape outline.

Please please don’t underestimate the importance of outline shape for certain users. Consistency for some can actually be an accessibility problem. Forcing everything into a circle or a square frame doesn’t offer uniformity, rather it adds a layer of visual complexity for the brain to process.

There’s some really nice touches in this adaptive icon work, but I haven’t yet seen evidence for the need for masking to the extent that has been introduced. Would love to know what you think to my thoughts..

    joerichards

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    Does modern sounding thing, slightly vague thing — cool word, second cool word, oh and something with personality!