Icon Navigation

Does anyone know of any website that use icons as a primary means of navigation?

I've seen them, but nothing specifically comes to mind. You might want to read a post from SmileyCat from a little while back that discusses this issue. In my opinion, standalone icons with no textual hints can be quite difficult to use in a web environment.

http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000603.php

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Can't think of any site that uses icons exclusively as a primary means of navigation.

Facebook is a good example of a site that would be very difficult to use were it not for the icons.

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A bit embarrassed to admit, but long ago, was on a neat team that had to scale a desktop-kiosk-ATM-type app to web app, primarily for Seniors, and it used almost exclusively icons (and selectable graphics which had very modest rollover state). It worked but was very limited per features/functions. Was bought by some US banking systems as ramp up for senior-customers and was promoted at the bank teller's counter. (I remember us inviting end-user/volunteers for on-going studies, by asking those veteran customers who commented on the ad-promo). One nice aspect the DOM was quite W3C "1.0" accessible.

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Andrew Schechterman

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On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Barney barney.carroll at gmail.com wrote:

Can't think of any site that uses icons exclusively as a primary means of navigation. Facebook is a good example of a site that would be very difficult to use were it not for the icons. Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42417 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list . discuss at ixda.org Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

Example is http://me.com. All main navigation are icons without any labels. And this is the only case when those icons can possibly work alone, because Mac users already got used to them.

But I would not rank that one as a website. It's more like application.

Krystal posted very nice link. I can add that it can be rather difficult to recognize an action behind the icon, so they should be really made with that in mind. Also there is a topic with different shapes for icons on the same bar & color usage.

In general, the support problem with using icons is that you will need to make new one's each time you change existing or add new menu item.

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Ikea uses them in their second-tier navigation (left nav.)

I would look through the examples on PatternTap [1] and Konigi [2].

[1] http://patterntap.com/tap/collection/icons
[2] http://konigi.com

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Correction, Ikea USED to use icons [1] but evidently have shifted away from this as the pressures on their second-tier navigation grew with an increasing amount of content.

[1] http://konigi.com/interface/ikea-navigation

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Although I agree with most of the disadvantages raised here, I thought I'd throw out a couple of advantages, on the flip side...

Many iphone apps use icon-based navigation, although the icons are typically accompanied by written names.

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Agree with many of the points above, and definitely agree that there's a good advantage for icons in that they do not need to be translated.

I'm an advocate for the safest method, which is to use larger icons with short 1-or-2 word descriptive text (or text on rollover). I will admit I love making icons, so I tend towards this approach most often. Tooltips generally work for me if space is a constraint.

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My experience tells me the quicker the user grasps information the better it becomes for the to relate or interact with your website or web application.

Icons used without text consume time and effort. The facade of "pretty" icons would eventually wear off if the navigation is poor. Icons usually supported by existing or rollover text might act as a mode to beautifying the design, but the user experience would remain unchanged.

Krystal, has provided a good link which gives a good insight into why "only" icon navigation is not a good idea.

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