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6 Comments

Should I have question icons displayed on the page?

Since our platform will contain a lot of data and much of that data may be new to our users, we would like to give them the opportunity to see a description of each data point.

The problem was just that in some of our views, the data points are very much packed together, which means that the question mark icons are going to change our UI structure.

What we thought as a solution was to make a button that could toggle the help icons on and off, as shown in the pictures. However, we do not completely agree that this is the best solution.

What is your opinion on this and are you in a similar situation and how did you solve it then?

  1. 2

    Probably you can keep a smaller and milder version (a color that suits your UI color palette) of those question icons in the end of each textbox rather than beside the label.

    Infact, question icons within a circle will look even nice and denote more like a help icon.

    Again, too many icons however small they are, may become an overkill. Left side to me seems self describing and doesn't need an explicit set of help icons.

    1. 1

      Thank you very much for your answer.

      It was also one of the things we talked about, that is, whether some of the "self-explanatory" elements need to have icons at all or it would be overkill.

      We will try with circle icons and see how it looks, thanks!

  2. 1

    First of all, not everything requires an explanation. So, screenshot number 2 is crazy in my opinion. We've got a few ? icons in the UI of our Android mobile app but because screen retail is so precious we've been pretty selective about them. We pop up a really small dialogue box and there's usually only about a sentence worth of content there.

    Next, I don't think "?" are the only solution. There are many ways to solve the problem with the potential for user confusion. Especially if you have a complicated product or technical details that require some explanation.

    Several successful techniques include: FAQs, "help" microsites, and in-app chat. Personally, I've used in-app chat with several providers and I loved the experience. You should likely consider using multiple solutions (and none of them have to be perfect) to help resolve those issues.

    1. 1

      Thanks, Steve. FAQs, microsites and chat all sound like a good alternative solution. At the very least, I think we should dribble down on the icons so that only the most necessary ones we put on.

  3. 1

    for my part I think all those icons make a lot of noise so I definitely do not want to use them all at once.

    Do not know if the button is the best solution though

    1. 2

      Thanks for your opinion.

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