[cap-talk] Firefox and identifiability, small steps or large

[marcs]

> The disadvantages of icons are:
> 
>   - It isn't practical for the user to create an icon. 
> Therefore it has
>     to be provided in the introduction, which increases the 
> possibilities
>     for confusion and social engineering. With textual names, the user
>     can always choose a name that is meaningful to them.
> 
>   - An icon can't be typed. It can only be selected from a list, or
>     referred to indirectly via a textual name. This makes icons less
>     expressive in the sense that you can't use them in many situations
>     where you could use a name, for example in a command line 
> interface.
> 
> I would be unsatisfied (both as a user and as a system 
> designer) with any system that allowed only icons to be used, 
> i.e. did not always permit a textual pet name to be used in 
> place of an icon.

While I agree that an icon-only system might be unsatisfactory, there's more
than one way to skin this cat. One of the ideas I have been inspired to
think about (Ken Kahn got me started thinking about this, I don't remember
how), was to assign faces to the identities. You could start with faces like
pirates, scientists, bankers, priests, etc., and edit them with mustaches,
freckles, sunglasses. For creating representations of trust relationships,
it would be really entertaining, and perhaps instructive, to experiment with
such mechanisms to allow users to create such icons, which could be very
expressive.

--marcs