MS Word diskette icon does is not look little obsolete?

[Roastduck]

Any replacement for the save icon would have to be universally better to gain any traction with users. Remember, there are thousands upon thousands of office drones that do everything on their computers by rote, rearranging icons or an unexpected dialog box confound them. Replacing the icon with another would require retraining, or at the very least increased help desk support, which costs money.

I think you'll find that most office drones tend to be more intelligent than you give them credit for

[Red Iron Crown]

I think you'll find that most office drones tend to be more intelligent than you give them credit for

Some more than others. Not to mention those who are very skilled in a particular field but not with computers (I have some experience in academia with this).

[acrain116]

Well, there could be another symbols in the future...

Guess which one is the "save" button:

I agree. If there were ever to be a new standard for the save icon, the cloud may be the best bet. A lot of services are starting to implement cloud storage. I'd expect the floppy to remain the standard icon for many years because of the reasons stated earlier, but I also expect someone in the future is going to try to change that.

[Sirrobert]

Now to be fair, they have to change something if they expect you to buy it each year.

I only download a new version of office if it's notably faster.

As in I skip sever versions just so I don't have to get used to a new interface every time. So that doesn't really work

[LawnDartLeo]

Ubiquitous..... EVERYONE knows what it means. It will never be changed for that reason. Same goes for that disk icon.

[rpayne88]

They do not fail, as they become culturally accepted. I already gave the example of the phone icon - I think you will be hard pressed to find a teenager that has ever phoned with a rotary phone. Yet virtually every single one of them knows what buttons to press on their smartphones.

It is fine that icons grow beyond their literal sense, as long as they are easily recognizable and fairly unique. That is exactly how our alphabet grows and evolves and that seems to work out pretty decently

I've used one, and I'm only 18.

Granted, I've only ever used on once and that was at my grandparent's.

[Dunbaratu]

Symbols don't need to have their sources readily identifiable by the user base. Pause buttons on music players are derived from the caesura (which is a pause) symbol in classical music notation, but everyone can recognize it as "pause."

But that's because they derive it differently. If "triangle" is "go" and "square" is "stop" then two vertical bars looks like the stop square with a bit of it missing, i.e. a partial "stop" - thus it fits logically for that to be pause. That's always how I thought of that symbol. It still has a recognizable meaning that is derived differently from the original but is NOT just based on memorizing it. It does have a logic to it. When the arrows to the right mean "forward" and the arrows to the left mean "backward" then it stands to reason that the vertical bars are holding still.

That's derived from thinking of the stream as a geometric line and thinking of moving along that line left and right.

The reference for things like an old-fashioned phone handset and an old fashioned 3.5 floppy don't work that way. They aren't based on a logical geometric inference, but based on a cultural one. For those of us who were around when the thing they reference were common, it's mapping to a familiar thing. For younger people, it's just an act of rote memorization with no logic to it.

I expect the 3.5 floppy icon will go away - probably to be replaced by a cloud with an arrow pointing into it.

[dharak1]

The only place I have ever seen a floppy drive would be school. I'm 13 and I can't remember ever having a computer with a floppy drive of any size around. I'm sure we had one when I was 2 or 3 but I can't remember it. I would say it's time for an upgrade when your students are younger than the computers.