This is a very common, very bad antipattern in UI design. Icons are NOT superior to labels. If you look at the old app you see words like “Observe” below the camera icon. This is gone in the new app. There is now a big plus sign that doesn’t add numbers. Apparently it creates a new entry, though why a plus sign means that is beyond me. The word “Observe”, while not ideal, is clearer.
There are other examples of this antipattern throughout the UI. When I press the plus button I see six more icons that don’t mean anything to me. The microphone I can guess. The others? Who knows? There are 2 camera icons and I couldn’t tell you which I should press when. There are two landscape icons that I guess mean photo library? But again, why two of them? If the icons had labels, the meaning would likely be obvious.
Please don’t cargo cult replay to this with, “But everyone does that.” Yes, but everyone is wrong. If necessary I can cite UI research and published guidelines that indicate apps shouldn’t do this and explain why.
Apparently the landscape icon with a slash through it is “Add Observation without evidence”. I never would have guessed that one.
Also, there’s an explainer somewhere with the meanings of the icons but if I ever saw it, it wasn’t when I needed to see it. Words on the icons themselves, or justv words with no icons, would be clearer.
That’s a separate issue that is also well understood and explained in the UI literature, and understood by almost no one outside of that. Physical affordances are generally superior to virtual ones, but that’s orthogonal to the issue here. Even physical knobs and dials need labels.
Unless the explainer explains the icons with more icons, its existence proves your point. Maybe the Id of a species could be a picture of the species instead of words. After all, that’s what it is to the cv. The cv just affixes the words to the image for the benefit of the humans.
