We recently installed Moodle for a professional development course we plan to offer. I noted that the left side of the Moodle course page has 4 activities: Assignments, Forums, Glossary, and Resources. I assumed that everything we included in the middle section of the page would then have 1 of the 4 icons to describe its type of activity and location. It surprised me then that one resource icon was replaced by the Acrobat icon and another by the Word icon when the resource had that format. I feel like the format should be noted but should not replace the icon. Can someone help me to understand the rational for moving beyond the legend given for the 4 activities? I'm having trouble convincing myself that adding more icons without a "connection" to the course framework is a good idea. But, I have an open mind and welcome explanations.
The filetype icons are universally recognised and provide important information (i.e. which program you are going to need to see the file). It's an at-a-glance usability win.
One of the principles of usability is that users should have a good idea of what will happen when they initiate an action. The icons help with this; you get extremely different results from accessing a Web link (instantly directed to that page, ordinary user experience) vs a PDF (takes a while to load then freezes your browser for a few seconds before opening within the browser in a different interface) or Word document (takes a while to load then, after suitable this-might-have-a-virus warnings from your browser, opens in a word processor).
As well as giving people a better idea of what will happen, this clear indication of file formats can help users make decisions ('Word file? Ah, screw that, I'll read it some other time'; 'My Palm Pilot doesn't support PDF so I won't try that link until I get back to the desktop'; etc).
Anyway, it's not exactly common that I defend Moodle, but in this particular case the decision to use filetype icons was a good one. Don't stress if you don't like it though - you can change the icons within a theme, so if you just copy in the same resource icon on top of each filetype icon in your theme, then they'll all be the same (or maybe there's some better way to do this, but you get the idea).
--sam
PS Our resourcepage extension shows filetype icons plus (after the title in small letters) a description such as '1.2MB Microsoft Word document'. Including the redundant information helps anyone who doesn't understand the icons build up that connection. But obviously this does add to screen clutter, so I'm not suggesting it should be followed in general.
One of the principles of usability is that users should have a good idea of what will happen when they initiate an action. The icons help with this; you get extremely different results from accessing a Web link (instantly directed to that page, ordinary user experience) vs a PDF (takes a while to load then freezes your browser for a few seconds before opening within the browser in a different interface) or Word document (takes a while to load then, after suitable this-might-have-a-virus warnings from your browser, opens in a word processor).
As well as giving people a better idea of what will happen, this clear indication of file formats can help users make decisions ('Word file? Ah, screw that, I'll read it some other time'; 'My Palm Pilot doesn't support PDF so I won't try that link until I get back to the desktop'; etc).
Anyway, it's not exactly common that I defend Moodle, but in this particular case the decision to use filetype icons was a good one. Don't stress if you don't like it though - you can change the icons within a theme, so if you just copy in the same resource icon on top of each filetype icon in your theme, then they'll all be the same (or maybe there's some better way to do this, but you get the idea).
--sam
PS Our resourcepage extension shows filetype icons plus (after the title in small letters) a description such as '1.2MB Microsoft Word document'. Including the redundant information helps anyone who doesn't understand the icons build up that connection. But obviously this does add to screen clutter, so I'm not suggesting it should be followed in general.
Thanks Sam. Sounds like a usability vs instructional design conflict - but I can live with it. I appreciate the information. Thanks!
ck