#floppy disk icon

[unbfacts]

Skeuomorphism is a design approach where contemporary items incorporate decorative elements from earlier versions, even when these features are no longer functionally necessary. Examples include tiny, non-functional handles on maple syrup bottles, decorative buckles on shoes, the floppy disk 'save' icon in software, and the shutter sound in digital cameras.

[luis-roy]

The Floppy Disk Enigma

                                This is my last post before submitting the blog to my tutor’s evaluation but I will continue posting on here. I found it very helpful and rewarding to write down my thoughts. The direction of the blog keeps focusing on users and their interactions with our real and digital-spheres. 

So today’s post is on Saving buttons.

We are all pretty familiar with a saving button on an app, on the web, on an email, on a desktop. Now we also know that the icon that means saving is the image of a floppy disk. I think last time I saw a floppy disk was with my mum, while she was working at her PC desktop, I was probably 10 years old. I don’t think any of my kids ( and I do plan to have a few!) will exactly know what a floppy disk is and why does the saving button "looks this funny!". But they will probably know it means saving a file or saving anything digitally. They will know because the saving button icon will stick around for a few more years. I think this is a really interesting subject and I would like to share my thoughts with you about it. I will call it:

The floppy disk enigma!

We humans, we UX designers, we general users of all things, need to relate to something on our environment to understand things effortlessly. So our brains need real world recognition to jump quickly and clearly between tasks, specially when we talk about digital products. This is also very important when designing good user experiences. And this is how the floppy disk icon was introduced. Nevertheless the floppy disk was a relative recent technological product that had an unpredictably short life span. Seated on a computer lab, and forgive my joking pitch, a group of nostalgic computer geeks were brainstorming around the saving button icon, and finally they all agreed on the old- fashioned floopy disk," - Oh those old days!".

But the most interesting aspect of this enigma is that if it was a good representation or not, that doesn’t matter anymore, because we all, users of all things, accepted this icon as the saving button icon, and we let it spread like a plague over our digital world. 

But what did those ingenious gentlemen did wrong, now that the original floppy disk is dead? 

First problem: as a UX designer I am compile to agree that the floppy disk icon was the convention adopted by everyone, users of all things, and I should evaluate any other form of representing this functionality as a severe problem to the standards and guidelines of  good UX design principles. But wasn’t the floppy disk dead? Would anyone born after this date know that once upon a time the floppy disk icon was actually a real world product? How do you justify this icon to the users of all things in the real world? 

Second problem: why do we need to stick to old fashioned conventions? Is not this one of the major problems of designing? Always bumping into traditional conventions that tight our hands together “for the sake of the good old times!”. I think we really need to be very careful about the choices we make, specially in such a young and bright field as HCI. 

We don’t need to hold to conventions, we need to question them! The floppy disk icon is one of many retro icons that hang- around the digital- sphere. I wonder what those designers were thinking when recreating them? It’s important to understand users needs but its also important to understand the time and space you are designing for. If you use a floppy disk icon to represent a saving button, or an analogue magnetic tape icon to represent video editing are you really designing with the users in mind? Or are you actually calling them stupid? 

The floppy disk enigma mirrors a problem that runs across all design fields. Designers decisions can create exponential problems that sometimes are very hard to fix. I wonder what will happen to the floppy disk icon? But I hope I will not need to explain to my kids why the saving button doesn’t have any real representation in their world: 

- It was something grandma used to have! Its like a religious relic of old computers!