Sadly, we are unwinding thousands of years of progress by reverting to picture writing.
That seems only partly true. We did already have punctuation marks (like !?) that are a form of picture writing to modulate the underlying alphabetic meaning.
The smiley was invented because a pure alphabetic script does not do a good job expressing emotions, especially in short isolated sentences.
Emojis are overused in some current contexts (smartphone/messaging addiction) but some sort of standardization along with "emoji" literacy is, in principle, an evolution of the alphabet towards more sophistication and nuance.
Emojis are not quite the same thing as picture writing (icons).
I used emojis for a while, then got kinda sick of them.
> a pure alphabetic script does not do a good job expressing emotions
Instead of a smiley emoji, I'll write "haha". Instead of a barf emoji, I write "barf". English has a million words in it. I'm sure you can find a variety of words that express emotions just fine.
?! being a form of picture writing? I don't see it.
What makes "?!" different from emoji in your eyes, exactly? It literally encodes emotional delivery of the sentence to which it is applied.
Case in point: Susan Kare's trash can icon is slowly being replaced by [delete] as people discover that words for actions are better than pictures.
Not convincing to me. The world of UI design is too agitated with copycat and fads to be a solid reference.
Many years ago I had a designer friend do some interface for me and I pointed out we should be using a couple icons for actions like "post", "delete", etc.
He replied something like "I don't believe in the thaumaturgical power of icons" and that has stayed with me forever since. Words may he worth 1/1000th of a picture but at least you understand them.
you hover your mouse over the icon and a tooltip appears with words. Also the menu item shows the icon next to the word.
> the menu item shows the icon next to the word
Proof that icons don't work.
The icon next to the word builds the association between the icon and the word. Users aren't all drooling morons with the memory of a goldfish. The first couple of times, yeah, you have to hunt for the right icon but after you know what you're looking for, the improved density of icons puts more tools within immediate reach. If tooltip shows the keyboard shortcut, even better!
The idea that everything should be immediately intuitive is ridiculous. Babies have to learn how to properly suck a nipple and how to chew food in order to eat. Why should we expect mastery of a much more complex tool to be immediate?
I blame Microsoft for that--in particular, the Ribbon (and before that, toolbars).