A RSS icon these days isn’t simply “RSS” inside a coloured rectangle, but an icon made up of something that resembles a dot with two curves at the right side. Who makes up these things? And why should we use them?

We all know that design is “the process of communicating visually using text and/or images to present information, or promote a message” (Wikipedia). The way the information is presented improves your understanding of the information --or not. In the last months, it appears a consensus is growing an icon must be used to represent technologies or services such as RSS and social bookmarking links, rather than text --and preferably one that says nothing about the service itself.

Some of this consensus can be blamed on the Mozilla Foundation, the club that promotes the RSS Syndication icon. On the RSS icon web page, it says we should “harmonise”, “customise” (through use of colours) and “standardise” the icons that represent RSS feeds on blogs and sites. The feed icon was created originally for use with the Live Bookmarks feature of the Mozilla Firefox browser. In that context the presence of the icon in association with a displayed web page indicates that information contained in the page is also available in the form of a web feed using the RSS or Atom web syndication formats.

While Mozilla Foundation doesn’t force us into using these feed icons, many web sites do, including high-quality sites such as BBC Online and TimesOnline (which carries the icon set at a 45 degree angle, with the symbol in one corner --not a very successful design if you ask me). Other high-quality web sites don’t—Salon comes to mind, and Apple. They keep their text-based RSS link, or in Apple’s case a text link with a black and white XML icon.

When Does a Symbol Become Widely Known?

Why indeed should we have to harmonise and standardise on service icons? I for one don’t think it’s a good idea to do so. Standardisation is something you only do when you must. Emergency exits around the globe are designated by the running man icon. This ensures everybody knows what the icon stands for (well, almost everybody).

Firefox accounts for some 15% of the browsers used today. A good 50% is Internet Explorer 5, 6 and now 7. A tiny percentage of roughly 2% web visitors use Safari. On the web, I believe we should standardise only if a symbol is meaningful to the majority of people we address. Compared to the running man icon, the RSS symbol doesn’t convey meaning at all.

The Firefox “market share” may be impressive, but is it enough to create meaning for the icon? And if it doesn’t, should we then use its icons, and automatically assume these are clear to the majority of users?

However, the RSS icon web page doesn’t just want us to standardise; its first line of attack is “harmonisation”. Well, I believe harmonisation is bad as well, because it is the first step to a uniform web.

Many web sites use more or less the same type of layout, visual clues and gimmicks these days. Web designers and webmasters are strongly influenced by usability research of Nielsen and his colleagues, and by temporary hypes like YouTube. While I applaud usability --you can’t be against that, now can you?-- I don’t think Nielsen and consorts are in their right mind when they say we shouldn’t make people think.

Blame it on Usability

Don’t understand me wrong: I’m not for a clumsy web site where nobody can find his/her way around. But what’s wrong with a web site --even a commercial one-- that has a design that makes us think?

What is wrong with it, the researchers say, is that the “provider” should lead his audience to the desired goal. The web nowadays largely being one huge commercial operation, the desired goal can’t be much else than you buying from them online. And sure enough, most webmasters will make sure they lead you (by the nose?) to the shopping cart as soon as possible. The shopping experience must be harmonised for potential buyers to find the shopping cart easily.

So, after the blatantly commercial sites, Mozilla now wants us to have a harmonised experience on content sites as well. Most webmasters seem to realise these rather abstract service icons are not easily understood, and they are adding the “Subscribe to my newsfeed”, “Social Bookmark this Article” and similar wordings just to make sure everybody understands what the icon stands for.

If we do need to add text, there must be something wrong with the symbol. How many people understand what RSS is anyway? In terms of usability: shouldn’t we just call it by its name, instead of trying to create a senseless icon for it?