I remember the day I was faced with coming in terms with the horrid OS X Lion update that came in the form of some greyed out monotone finder icons. In the following days, I could immediately sense I was spending longer amounts of time trying to accomplish basic operations of navigating within the sidebar. After denial, I was in the acceptance phase when I told myself, it’s a matter of time and eventually, I would never remember the blissfully colourful days of finding folders quickly. Seven years later, to this day, I still sometimes mourn the tragic state of misfortune that has come upon my poor finder friend.
We have of course come a long way from coloured icons and now debating the merits of filled vs hollow ones. Icons, when used in actionable UI elements, at the bare minimum, is to aid in bringing enough distinction between similarly grouped elements. It can take a step ahead and also alleviate understanding of each element it is supporting. But never should it be the case that it gets in the way of parsing the information by increasing cognitive load.
Like with any new UI element, there is some learning opportunity it provides. Once you have mastered a technique, like advertisements, you tend to ignore a chunk of visible information. You begin to not focus on how to get to a task and move towards the task itself. Reading a book set in a good font is another example where you begin processing information rather than actually read whole words.
So in taking out the colours from the finder icons that aided me and perhaps many others to find specific folders quicker, I am now forced with having to read the folder names which almost makes the icons unnecessary. I have of course found alternate methods of organising so I’m limiting my need for the sidebar but it’s still isn’t completely eliminated. Earlier for instance when I needed to look for ‘all files’ I knew I had to just look for the brownish file icon or for the desktop, the purplish blob and so on.
Of course, you can customise any folder by pasting an icon with ‘Get Info’ but once in the sidebar, it has no effect. It would be great to have clearly distinguishable icons for the finder back in ways not needing to modify my kernel or purchasing a third party software that could be malicious or even out of date in no time.
I’m sure there is some number around how much collective time has been lost to what looks like simple interface changes. But I also wish for minimalism in UI to not take away a maximum of my time. Perhaps a solution for the finder sidebar could simply be the ability to assign colour tags, that will do for now. Please.