Confusing icons for documentation applicability

kenn_sebesta167

In my two cents, the below imagery OnShape uses to show if something is for desktop, iOS, and/or Android is confusing. The upshot is that for those not familiar with how OnShape does things, it tends to suggest a feature is iOS-only.

 

This might be because the first and last icons are not words; the Android icon doesn't have great recognition value; and the first isn't a commonly used icon at all. So the iOS comes through very loud, and the other two are subdued.

https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/folders.htm is a great example of how this can go wrong, since a user looking at this page might initially conclude that this feature is *only* available for iOS.

I don't have any great suggestions for how to do this better, alas. Maybe just spelled out as PC / iOS / Android?

S1mon

I never saw it exactly that way, but it is awkward.

More confusing and/or frustrating to me is that I need to choose which part of the documentation to view at all. If I'm on a desktop browser, it should assume I want to see that documentation. If I'm on mobile, pick the right one for the platform. I get that browser detection doesn't always work, and users might want to look up documentation for their mobile platform while viewing it on their desktop or vice-versa, but those edge cases can be handled with some overall selector button.

It's similar situation with language detection and web sites. Web sites don't have an option that you need to select on every page to pick English/French/German/Simplified Chinese/Japanese above every section before you can read it. The sites try to detect the language setting for the user's browser/OS and then they may also offer an override switch. 

kenn_sebesta167

Well, well, well, look what we have here!



Once again, OnShape's technical documentation team ups their game. Very nice to see these new icons.