Saturday, April 16, 2016

icons - Does having different functionality for the same button on different screen cause a usability issue?


Within two different screens of a product I'm designing I would like to use an icon for a secondary action. In both screens using an icon with an X in it seems the most logical choice, although the actions caused by clicking the icon changes depending on the screen a user is in. My question is if this can be confusing to user and if it would be better to think of a different icon for one of the two screens.


Specifically, the first screen shows a list of downloads currently in progress. Clicking the X removes one of the downloads from the queue.


downloads in progress



The second screen shows a list of installed programs, clicking the X will start the uninstall process.


enter image description here



Answer



This should be fine.


In each case the user will understand that "X" means stop the current process. So it's obvious that the first tab "X" means "stop the download". However in the second tab I would have thought that a more intuitive meaning was "stop the install". In this case I would perhaps have a more explicit label if the action is "uninstall".


It is usually OK because ""stop" or "delete" is an action that can apply to many situations and you have to have the context to make sense of it.


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