Icons really are everywhere! I hadn’t realized that until recently and that’s probably because of their very recognizable and memorable nature. And they’ve been around for a long time, too! Here was the definition I found when I Googled the word:
A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration.
For this reflection, I started looking around my house for icons and honestly couldn’t find too many right away. But then I immediately thought of the icons used in social media apps that I use daily (I know…shocker!). As an avid personal user and user for my current job, I’ve seen the interfaces of these apps change over time. And over time, they’ve been evolved the iconography used. I think at first when they were introduced on certain apps, it likely took some time for them to become recognizable. Also, the placement has often changed over time. A great example of this would be Instagram.
Instagram’s App Icons
With the release and hype of their TikTok copycat feature, Instagram Reels, their icon for Reels now takes center stage as the middle icon in the bottom main row of icons. Historically, the (+) button that was used to add new photos to your feed was in that place but has now been moved to the upper right next to the messages icon. While Instagram has some pretty universally recognized icons (home, like, search), they also utilize some brand-specific ones as well. The Reels icon was made specifically for this new product and the messages icon belongs to Facebook, which does ultimately carry that brand recognition with it. Despite the universal icons, it is interesting they don’t use text below them to aid in identification.
Facebook’s App Icons
While Instagram is owned by Facebook, they still have distinctive icons. At the end of the day, they are separate products with different uses despite having some integrations between each other. Instagram is a bit more of simple UI whereas Facebook can be a little more complex. But that’s where icons come into save the day!
Here Facebook does use labels under their icons, which helps for overall usability, especially considering the demographic skews older than Instagram. In a similar vein, it’s interesting how Facebook intertwines universal icons with their own original ones for specific features and products, like Pages and Events shown above. As I manage Facebook business pages, I have this additional icon available to me for quick navigation to pages if I need to. And Events continue to be something they’re always iterating on, especially as the world looks at events in a pandemic world. And even beyond the icons in the menu, you have engagement icons that are commonly known (like, comment and share). And then in the status bar, you have Live, Photo and Room. Again we have two different features/products Facebook has unique to its platform. It’s also interesting these ones are colored versus the ones below. While Facebook is an overall complex product with many features, they use icons to their advantage to make workflows easily memorable and recognizable for everyone that uses their app, be it desktop or mobile.
When used correctly with simple and memorable icons, they can make for a better user experience. We see it with these two examples. When used poorly with hard to understand symbols and complex designs, it can confuse the user further. Always think about the user!
