XPost referenced from by usupercharv Four Nations Review Scotland I am a bot . I delete my negative comments . OriginalPostSearcher OriginalPostSearcher OriginalPostSearcher # faq <| sep |> Just . why ? I don ' t have a cancer , but I ' m happy that my taxes go to public healthcare . I don ' t really use museums , but I ' m happy that someone else has the ~~ change ~~ chance to see things that they appreciate , even if I don ' t . It ' s not about me , it ' s about the welfare of the nation I live in . I might sound harsh , but that kind of mentality you have is horribly selfish . Etypo <| sep |> IMHO icons should definitely be treated with caution , or you quickly end up with a case of iconitis . Two examples from my current workplace 1 we have a menu of reports really obscure callcentre specific metrics in a variety of formats . A HiPPO wanted pretty icons for each one of the twelve reports . At this point I felt like I was psychic and could see into the future . Sure enough , six months after carefully crafting a dozen obscure icons , eight more reports were added to this menu . Anyone want to create an icon for ' Verbatim mean KPI '? Me neither someone has to protect our users ' eyes from bleeding . As the HiPPO had moved on I was able to present a commonsense solution I looked for the similarities between the reports . Some of them are bar charts , some line charts , some pie charts , tables , etc . Text labels with icons to help you identify what ' type ' of report you can expect to see when you open the page . We also regrouped the menu items into broad categories . So now , when viewing the menu , you are able to quickly scan to the ' verbatim ' section and look for the one with the line icon next to it . 2 on another product we have a lefthand nav as you describe in your post that collapses into a drawer when you want more space . This consists of six highlevel categories , each with subpages . The categories have icons and label , the subpages just have labels . The reason why we stuck with having icons for , what are essentially pretty abstract categories , is so that when the nav is collapsed , you just see the icons . In summary , icons have to serve a purpose . When used well , they are a concise way to present information . When used badly they distract and confuse users . If they ' re too abstract , maybe you need to look at your information architecture break it down into more logical groups and use icons to signify the differences , rather than ' literal ' translations of the label . If you ' re not sure test with your users