In previous articles, we have seen how icons can decay, how their meaning drifts away from their origins and eventually from user understanding and usefulness. This article discusses how developers can respond to icon obsolescence. It is not just by scrapping old icons and replacing them, but tracking ‘icon vitality’ and ‘icon health’ by repeated testing and teaching.

As digital interfaces become more complex and audiences become more diverse, icons must do more than look nice. They must communicate clearly and consistently.

Some principles and strategies for future-focused icon design are as follows:

1.       Identify At-Risk Icons

Not all legacy icons need to be replaced, but some do and the signs of functional obsolescence are:

·       When the object that the icon depicts is no longer recognisable.

·       When users cannot guess the function from the shape of the icon.

·       When the icon is misinterpreted across cultures.

·       When you are relying on the icon alone to convey important meaning.

Consider the following icons:

💾 Save is an obsolete object and the icon is only understood by learned convention.

📎 Attach, the literal reference of the paper clip is disappearing

📤 / 📥 are both often confused without supporting labels.

📁 Folder is highly abstract for mobile users or cloud-first workflows.

Developers could test and use onboarding feedback to identify points of friction.

2.       Design with Redundancy

Redundancy is one of the easiest ways to counter icon decay. This can involve:

·       Icon + label: add a short text descriptor.

·       Icon + tooltip: hover text.

·       Icons in a sequence: use icons together in context 🕒 ➝ 💊 ➝ 🥛with the intended meaning of ‘Take pill at 7am with water’.

This strategy can support low-literacy users, non-native language speakers and people unfamiliar with digital metaphors. Redundancy ensures clarity, even if the icon’s metaphor is decades out of date.

3.       Teach Icons Like Language

The meaning of icons can be acquired just like new words in a language can be learned. Visual fluency can be built up by using onboarding screens, explainers and repeated visual cues to build fluency. Learning can be reinforced as follows:

·       In apps, create icon walkthroughs, e.g. ‘This icon means submit’, ‘This icon means save’, etc.

·       In leaflets, include visual glossaries if visuals are used.

·       Callouts could explain what each symbol means.

Repetition reinforces memory. With consistent design, even abstract icons become familiar over time.

4. Let It Go… Let it Go… God Bless It

Sometimes, a dead metaphor is just a dead metaphor. The signs of death are:

·       When the icon confuses users more than it serves them.

·       When the visual shape, i.e. what it depicts, is not aligned with current user tools or concepts.

·       When we are holding onto an icon for nostalgia rather than clarity.

If any one of these happens to an icon, the decent thing is to declare it deceased, retire it and redesign the icon with a more relevant metaphor.

Build for Clarity, Not Just Convention

Icons are powerful, but power fades with time. Our visual language has to evolve with the digital environment. This does not imply declaring every legacy symbol dead and retiring them, but it does mean questioning what still works.

Developers need to design with clarity, support visual literacy and test icon understanding as seriously as you test content. And this is the thing: visuals are very often ignored during the testing process, whether in readability tests or cognitive debriefing or, believe it or not, UX testing. But it is important because we need to know about obsolescence in its earliest stages. Ignoring visuals in the testing process does not enable this. In the end, a good icon is not one we remember. It is one we don’t have to think about at all, because it works.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Leeds, United Kingdom, April 2025.