Icons & Labels A Perfect Balance
When you are creating a product, Think about the use-cases from the user & business point of view. It’s like to fulfill user requirements to achieve the business goal. So, to achieve this, icons & labels play a very important role in product design.
The well-known case scenario for every product design are: Icons with Labels, Labels only & Icons only.
A combination of all three is very important to win the user. Getting the right combination for your product is very important. Few things to remember when you are creating a product:
Understand Your Business
It’s always important to understand your company business & it’s goals because every business targets their user differently. You can’t compare a social media platform with an e-commerce platform because both have different businesses & different use cases for their users. For example, Twitter & Airbnb both have totally different business & product. So, their goals & use cases both are different from each other. For someone heart icon represent a showcase of love & for other, it represents “Add to Wishlist”
Product Frequency & Usage
One of the most important things to know that what’s the usage of your product? & how frequently a user using your product?
For example: On a social media platform, where a user use the product regularly, then it’s a good place for you to play with more new ideas & do some quick experiments with new features & icons but on the other hand in a real estate product, In which a user use your product occasionally then you don’t want to introduce a new icons, which will be a new learning curve for the user.
Know Your Target Audience
If you don’t know your target audience then you will die soon. Know the age, gender, region, wealth, language, likes, dislikes etc of your audience before starts anything else because every single point affects your product. For example use case of a icons/labels for a 5 to 8yr’s old kid app or use case of a icons/labels for an adult app are totally different.
Check The Devices & OS
The use case of icons/labels in the mobile & the desktop are totally different. In the mobile, we mostly use icons over labels because of less space but in the desktop, we prefer labels over icons because of more space to play & great chance to inform the user. Sometimes the use case of icons & labels are also different for iOS & Android because of the behavior & pattern of the user is different in both the OS.
No Need To Reinvent The Whole Wheel
Sometimes it’s good to do nothing. If something is already solved then there is no need to waste your time on it because most of the user are used to it. For example dustbin icon for delete or clip icon for attachment, Then there is no shame to use those icons which are mostly used by other products & known by the mass audience but you can give your own twist to it.
Get The Knowledge
It’s always critical to introduce a new icon which is new for the user to identify but remember a few things when you are introducing any new icon:
a) Is there any need for a new icon?
b) How frequently User use your product?
c) It’s should be easily understandable
Conclusion
A combination of icon & label is very critical because sometimes even a small thing impacts your product & business a lot. So, use icons & labels carefully. If you want to know how to use icons & labels? read this: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/
