Love Songs

I’ve been reading recently about a couple of platforms, namely Android and Ubuntu Unity about these platforms wanting to get rid of menus:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/28/google-tells-android-devs-to-kick-the-menu-button-to-the-curb/

and

http://www.osnews.com/story/25539/Ubuntu_To_Replace_Menus_with_Search_Field_Dubbed_HUD_

Now, the Ubuntu example, as it it shown above can only ever be an alternative to menus, not a replacement, it’s far to unwieldy. But if we look at the Android example, here we have it:

And we can see how icons are not a suitable replacement for words. Working from the left, this icon could be “refresh” or “sync”, the next could be “take a photo” or “view photos”, the next could be search or zoom, the next two could really mean anything, and the last is probably the only obvious one as “delete”.

Think how much more obvious words would be in this context.