I agree that certain icons that are common parlance can increase cognition ( vs. x). However I think expanding a users icon lexicon and forcing memorization can actually harm cognitive experience.
Our users are context switching across dozens if not hundreds of digital experiences a day. Forcing memory recall is a tax. The question is always "whats the ROI?"
IMO color and words go just as far as an icon without relying on net new visual language.
As per your comment on horizontal scrolling, I couldn't agree more. Horizontal scrolling is booty. However, depending on the job to be done you can avoid overly wide tables with customizable columns, expandable rows, hover states, and strategic truncation.
I certainly would prefer those strategies over relying on a unique icon language that isn't part of the dozen or so immediately recognizable icon schemas already familiar to users.
In a data grid or table the relative cognitive load of the page is already very high. Adding iconography to the table body content is often unnecessary and increases visual noise, processing requirements, and generally reduces readability/scanability.
I've always felt that icons in this context are a risk or liability instead of a strength. I decided to info dump my findings to my team then published it as an article.
I probably could use a good editor to help me next time!
I agree that your screenshots doesn't make any sense in relation with the content of your text.
It's like image randomly spread along the text without no meaningful relation.
So much that I was wondering if it was not an AI generated article or partially.
Everyone would expect that you show example of good and bad UX for each point that you are making.
Making me see confirm by myself with example that doing X is clearly looking nicer to understand than doing Y.
I think you need to show examples of this bad usage, then.
Your first image has zero icons in the rows. It has album covers but those aren't icons.
Your second and third images show very usage that combines text, color, and relatively standard icons like checkmarks, X's, or in-progress. These are good and if you're trying to suggest these reduce readability, scannability, or add noise, then I'm frankly baffled.
Your third image also shows profile images, but again those are not icons.
So what are you arguing against? I can't ever remember coming across icons in a datagrid that "added to the relative cognitive load". And if you're arguing against checkmarks or X's, I don't think your arguments hold up.
But even with "real" icons -- like, I've seen icons to show if a software package is for Windows or Mac or Linux. If a row is a TV show or a movie. If it's one file or an archive. If there's a PDF file download attached. An alarm icon for something past due. But these all seem totally fine and helpful. They're generally linked to a major feature of the platform that everybody understands, and help scannability.
Without clear examples of what you're arguing against, I'm frankly completely lost.
I think in the future product designers will shift into two factions. Live code generation and design system development. Design systems will be the backbone of any quality AI interface generation system. How we build those design systems will be the interesting part. Will most people unify around material/carbon or will they invest in house teams to ensure their UX doesn't fall behind the competition?
my push back on this is that unless you have a pretty robust visual design system the outputs are going to be incredibly unoriginal. Yes it will make solving UX problems faster but at the cost of visual differentiation. There is always going to be a place for high fidelity exploration for styling innovation and brand identity.
it's a good push back. I do think this assumes some (small) design language to extrapolate. But that's also something that will become borderline free in an AI world so I think it's a safe assumption.
What's more interesting that doesn't exist yet is the ability to create more compelling visual languages/systems based on inspiration screenshots. That's a big unlock IMO. Everything right now is very generic.
