Need ideas for an icon

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 12:30pm

What book are you referring to?

And I dont see how it makes sense (if at all possible, try really hard to imagine a new user looking at that icon rather than yourself, and without being biased, tell me if it makes sense). How can any uninitiated individual (i.e. new user, not Michael Pryor) fathom that a sprout coming out of a tree stump would refer to 'unflatten' tree? Even that sentence by itself sounds absurd. I guess at the very least there is the [wholly dependent] GH user forum to explain all. Bad user experience once commercially released is what concerns me the most.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 1:28pm

Easy. Use the text components if its that difficult. :) Grasshopper icons are a language. Just as one would need to learn any language before they speak it they need to practice and use them. This goes for coding as well. When someone understands data trees and how grasshopper works then it will make sense why unflatten is the rebirth of a flatten i.e. the re-growth of a stump. Im certain grasshoppe will have an official document once its completed as it is mcneel and they document help files really well online. http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/5/help/en-us/commandlist/command_list.htm

All in all grasshopper is one of the easiest coding languages to learn.

To be perfectly Honest I dont even remember the icons. I just type the commands in I need.

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 2:12pm

Thanks. One quick point: GH isn't a coding langauge! Its an algorithm editor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on March 16, 2013 at 2:31pm

Now we can argue :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 2:35pm

It is a programming language :)

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 2:57pm

Correct! It is not however coding; clearly Meteusz overlooked the all important 'C' word in my post! A form of programming it most certainly is, but nowhere in my post did I suggest otherwise. Heck, even managing your washing machine cycle is a form of programming. What a wonderful digital world we live in. But lets not get into another 'visual programming and why it sucks' debate, I think everyone is well versed on the limitations.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 16, 2013 at 1:42pm

The whole concept of data "trees" is pretty complex. While a real tree is a nice analogy for what this data structure looks like, not all the complex data manipulation operations find a similar equivalent in nature.

Think about "Graft" in a botanical way. You transfer a top part of one plant onto the roots of another. I think, "graft" would be a far more fitting analogy for this component here. Even you might agree, that a tree stump is a good symbol for a flattened tree. Now this root contains all data. If you transfer a new tree crown onto this stump, it will transfer all this data into then new structure...  now regraft data from a flattened tree and you get a combination of the two symbols.

Problem is, there already is a component that adds new branches to an existing tree, which in botanical terms is also called grafting...

all that said, find a symbol that works in 20x20 pixels...

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 1:51pm

That makes sense. I was thinking graft at first as well. The two are similar.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 16, 2013 at 1:52pm

Sometimes an operation can be represented by an icon very well, sometimes it's very difficult and sometimes it's easy but we all still use a visual metaphor because it has become the standard representation.

An icon is not supposed to explain what a certain function does. If it can, great, if not, no harm done. There are much better ways of explaining functionality and tooltips are right at the top of that list.

Icons need to serve the following purposes:

• Be rememberable. Once you know what an icon means it should be hard to forget.
• Be distinct. An icon must look different from its neighbours so it's easy to find.

These are of course my personal feelings and you're welcome to disagree with them. I would concur that Grasshopper has become harder and harder to learn over time as more functions were added. I hope I can do a better job in the future of 'hiding' expert functionality until the user is ready for it than I've done so far, but this is a very difficult task.

--

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 16, 2013 at 1:58pm

Can some analogy be proposed that actually refers to what the component is doing....

I can't think of a good analogy. Most components that operate on tree data-structures often have quite abstract icons associated with them. It's relatively easy to visually represent geometric operations, but tree management modifies the way in which data is structured. Language and imagery to do with data trees is quite metaphor-heavy by necessity.

--

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 2:21pm

Flatten tree icon: a tree outline, similar to some of the attached suggestions posted on this thread, being compressed with a bold arrow on top directing downwards

Unflatten tree: As above but with the arrow pointing upwards?

Simple, more intuitive (although far from perfect), and better than the current offering. Thoughts?

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 2:35pm

Better for who? Also, that makes no sense to me atleast as flatten is just the name. Flatten really just removes all the branches in a tree. I think this is why david choose the cutting of a tree. Again, if you understand the tree logic the icons do make sense as an abstraction.

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