Icons are images meant to represent a concept more simply. Sometimes they are very useful in UIs and sometimes they are not. Here are two cases we often run into with our user interfaces at Informatica.
Icon Overload
When are icons not useful? Try when there are just too many. We have a term here at Informatica called "icon overload". It's when there are too many icons in an interface for them to be at all useful to the user. The user ends up being visually overloaded with imagery and the interface can get bogged down with distraction instead of production. Putting every possible action into a toolbar seems as if you are providing the user with options, but when it's too many it often creates frustration. Depending on a toolbar to solve all your UI needs is the easy way out for you, but hard for the user. We ran into this issue in a few of our products and we worked on several different approaches to get away from icon overload. First, we now use a single action menu which can contain all available actions and is available to the user to peruse as needed. If we find that certain actions are used over and over and a user identifies with the image then we push those actions out onto the toolbar as an icon. Second, we use contextual tool bars. The icons on the tool bars change according to what is selected or in focus as opposed to being disabled. Third, we use icons altogether outside of tool bars. We provide icons for actions directly in table rows or associated with objects so the user has quick access to actions as opposed to select then act from a toolbar.
Complex Concepts
Icons are ultimately meant to be a quick visual reference to an action or an object. If the visual reference is incomprehensible - it's useless. In these cases, users spend too much time hovering and tool tip reading as opposed to quickly visually finding their needed action and one-clicking to make it happen. I am often faced with creating a 16x16 icon for actions such as "restore default value" and "set WHERE class". In these cases, we have moved more in the direction of not using icons and being more direct with things called words. We are trying out buttons with actions written on them and using the action menu with words and no icons. If the concept is not something that is easily recognizable visually, we won't visualize it.
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