6 tips to make the best iPhone app icons. 70% of users hate the new iOS icons
heycrowd.com1. Users notoriously have no idea what they want. Surveys may not be the best method to determine the effectiveness of an icon because youre asking the user to predict their future behavior (which most are happy to do, confidently). The only way to test an icons effectiveness, is to test icons in a real world environment.
2. We hear this story every time Apple releases a product, when Google updates Gmail, when Facebook gave us Newsfeed. An instant gut reaction to change is not indicative of long term success or failure. People "hating" the icons is meaningless - they havent even been released yet. Change is good, its what drives our ambitions forward. Don't survey people and let the results scare you into stagnating.
3. http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/graphic-design...
> Users notoriously have no idea what they want
This quote is used out of context all the time. Please, I know what I want and so do most people around me. Say that people cannot predict their future and that's fine by me. But don't generalize that to your first line.
Its interesting the title says people hate the new icons, when they only preferred the old icons. Theres a comic to explain this situation quite well. http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout
But they're talking about a layout change, which can drastically alter the way someone goes about using a website. Icon changes don't really do that.
Where does the "70%..." figure come from? It's not mentioned anywhere in the article. For that matter, the article itself throws around a lot of phrases like "clearly performing better", "proof", and "worst way", but the only evidence seems to be self-selected, explicit choice online polls?
There is a link in the post to the statistics. It's here heycrowd.com/surveys/admin?id=2129 if you didn't see it