Do your users understand the icons?

When [Amazon] figured out customers didn’t know the magnifying glass was a standard symbol for search—some were calling it the ping-pong paddle—it added pop-up descriptions and recommendations in Hindi.

The image is from a very thoughtful presentation by Luke Wroblewski, called Mind the Gap.

The presentation goes deep into a topic that is very important to me not only because of the app I’m building right now but also because I encounter this stuff every day it seems and I’m tired of apologizing to people for how bad so many apps and web sites are.

(I presume I’m not alone in doing that since my profession is responsible for confusing the heck out of so many people every day).