Finding the application icon is difficult
On my company provided phone, all application icons look the same,
the are heavy rounded squares. On my personal phone it is a bit
better, only some of them are, the rest are circles. Despite not
having very many applications (not even a handful in addition to
the preinstalled once that couldn't be removed or was too fundamental
to remove), it takes much longer for me to find the correct application
on the phone comparied to the computer.
Icons have the following basic feature: shape, colour, texture. And
they can of course have shapes on top of shapes. When all icons have
the same enclosing shape, such as a circle or a rounded square
(or hypercircle as the case may be), they look very similar because
they the same primary shape. Typically, secondary shapes or not even
outline, so they are not very prominent, and texture isn't a commonly
use feature at all, in fact, it is difficult to include in small icons.
This leaves colour as the primary distinguishing feature, and there
are not that many colours to use. Yes, you can mix colours, but
the icon will just look like the average of the colours. For this
reason, icons for Google applications look almost identical.
When designing a the icon theme for a system, it is of course important
to realise that how this feature's importance in distinguishing icons
is different from person to person, and texture generally not useful
at all for men. Conversely, having animated icons would problematic
for men, as men are more sensitive to peripheral motion.
The importance of text associated with icons cannot be overstated.
While this also varies from person to person, text may or may not
be easier to find than icons. This may sound insignificant and may
lead you to conclude that using only icons may be worth while to
save space, however, find a piece of text in a list (or even on a
page) may be take just a fraction of the time. Personally, I identify
a text in a list about 20 times faster than an icon. Although I do
realise that I've yet to meet someone that can find a piece of text
as quick as I can.