A note on methodology: typically in experimental surveys you don’t want to prime your subjects with words or phrasing that could lead to positive or negative bias.
Additionally, negatively-biased phrasing on a public survey could also attract mostly those with negative views. This would skew your sample even further than solely priming.
With that said, I have no idea what any of those icons are.
I'd agree with you if the point of the survey was to collect information, but I think the structure of the survey makes it pretty clear that this isn't the intent.
Just from my own experience, I have used the overwhelming majority of these services and even worked at Amazon for several years and I could not answer more than a couple of those questions. The icons are so divorced from any real world meaning that when I make systems diagrams in Lucid Charts I use the AWS icons to represent abstract systems rather than the real AWS-specific meaning.
At first I agreed with you but taking the quiz I admit the title didn't really influence how I already felt about AWS icons. At least I remember AWS' service names like Firehose and Kinesis; GCP's are hard to remember when they don't use mnemonic devices for most of their products.
Aws feels like it was built by a bunch of siloed teams. There's a lot of design inconsistency I notice every time I'm in the console. For example, deleting entities is never consistent. Some just do it, some ask you to type in the name, some as you to type "delete me".
Some entities have a name and a description field that are immutable on creation, even though they also have a unique id. I now have drop downs everywhere that list "Rds creation wizard VPC" or something long those lines.
Its not clear what fields are drop downs so I have to type stuff into them to see if they'll give me a list of options.
The UI uses the same styles but inconsistent language. In ECS there's a list of entities. To delete an entity you have to go into it and delete all its children. Then the entity disappears.
I know there's engineering reasons for all this, but I feel like they can do better than settle for engineer grade UI.
Names and Icons on AWS were made by people who don’t realize who helpful names and icons can be.
If it’s a database, use the cylinder icon that everyone knows is a database and then add some identifier to show which database it is.
If it’s DNS, don’t be too clever and name it Route 53. Name it Amazon Cloud DNS. Then anyone knows how to look for it in the console, web search for it, etc.
If you want something that the marketing folks can feel proud about wasting time on, add the silly name to the descriptive name: Amazon DNS Potato
> If it’s DNS, don’t be too clever and name it Route 53. Name it Amazon Cloud DNS. Then anyone knows how to look for it in the console, web search for it, etc.
Please no. The unique AWS product names while occasionally inconvenient mean that you can at least find relevant information about them when searching, and you know that someone isn't confusing an AWS product with another platform or another style of deployment.
If you really don't like the AWS product names, then Azure is for you. Now go try to search for help with "Azure web apps" or "Azure sql database". Wade through the posts about locally deployed IIS, SQL server and the like.
And why "Amazon" EC2 but "AWS" Lambda? It throws me off every time I look at an alphabetically sorted list of the services. Granted, Microsoft slaps "Azure" in front of some of their services, but Amazon seems to optimise for having "AWS" and "Amazon" mentioned together as many times as possible, as if we need to be reminded.
Glacier and Snowball were both the internal code names for the products pre-launch, and only ever intended to be such.
When things came close to launch, AWS Marketing decided to just roll with those code names. I've a suspicion that some teams deliberately used copyrighted names for their internal pre-launch project names, just to force the matter.
I've probably spent at least 3 hours collectively trying to find the DNS only to find/remember it is called Route 53. I rarely use it outside of initial setup and trying to recall the name of it each time is maddening.
But then they would have to take the marketing questions out of their associate level certification exams.
1. Which service would you use for DNS record creation?
A) Route 53
b) Amazon Cloud DNS
I joke, its an extremely low quality question regardless of the name. Some of the questions on the exam were pretty insightful, especially the ones that covered problems and what steps you would take to resolve them. Overall, the AWS associate level certification did feel like a giant marketing ploy, but my company wanted me to have it and paid for me to study and take it, so it was a nice relaxing break from the day-to-day.
In general, I would not expect questions around expect people to remember details about a logo just from a name to work very well. People in general can't do that even with extremely famous logos: https://www.signs.com/branded-in-memory/ Nor can they generally even draw a bike, with physical necessity available to guide them: http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
However, it is absolutely a reasonable request of a logo that you be able to go from logo to designated product, and while quizzing about details like "which horizontal pole is higher" is definitely a bit of an ask, you should still see a lot of people getting that right from just "feeling" which seems right.
AWS do put a lot of work into their icons set. That said, we (draw.io) get a lot of direct complains about the icons because:
1) They can't find certain AWS icons (the problem is it's there, they didn't expect it to look like that).
2) They change and move between sets rather a lot. That was more a problem previously, the set hasn't actually changed yet this year.
If there's a designer out there willing to create an alternative set, we're more than willing to add it in and see what people prefer. Probably more constructive than just saying "they are bad", show us something better.
I work with AWS every day, and I just realized that even though all the symbols have a consistent look, the style is so generic I don't mentally associate it with AWS. To me it looks like symbols from a design diagram where somebody was in a hurry and picked random symbols from their drawing program's image library.
I don't think they have a 'bad icon' problem as much as a 'too many services' problem. I'm not necessarily saying that they need less functionality, just that they need to divide it up into fewer named/iconed chunks of functionality.
Very entertaining and bludgeons you over the head with the point of the survey. I got 6/20 and several correct answers were lucky guesses. I only really recognized EC2, Lambda, and VPC. That doesn't mean the icons actually convey what those are to me though - it's just memory since I use them often.
I'm not sure where one goes in the AWS web interface to view these icons. Poking around the EC2 menus for a while, I don't see an icon anywhere.
I wouldn't say the icons are _good_, but I wonder if part of the reason the quiz is so hard is that Amazon doesn't really care if you know what the icons mean anyway. Seems like they're mostly used for branding and marketing, not anything users will see regularly.
To me, the icons are far too abstract to mean anything. They all look like the results of someone playing around randomly in a 3D modeling tool. For example, look at the CloudFront icon. I'd expect something more evocative of clouds or similar, but it's just a cube that's been cut and exploded with the rear two subcubes removed.
That said, they're probably extremely easy to generate procedurally:
There's a famous story about early UI fail in some CAD software.
Icons had just come into vogue (yes, there was a time before icons). The CAD system in question used a puck on a big mat to choose functions from a grid of names, which were labels like GRAPH and CONNECT and DEL and so forth. But all-caps names weren't very sexy, so the company decided to replace them with more intuitive icons, cool little pictures of the operations. Getting rid of the tiresome and uncool simple text labels was going to win back market share!
Predictably, users complained that they had a hell of a time trying to figure out which of the tiny, intuitive pictures corresponded to the concrete operations.
The company's response? Supply users with a printed cheat sheet that let them find the icon for each operation. To do a CONNECT, you'd look at the cheat sheet and find the corresponding essentially arbitrary (but intuitive!) squiggle, then search for the intuitive squiggle in a sea of other intuitive squiggles. ("No, not that one!")
I use AWS every day and got 17/20. Thanks to a couple of lucky guesses.
But, I believe that at least two of the questions have incorrect/incomplete answers:
One of the questions that requires a typed answer (instead of multiple choice) shows an icon that is used for both EC2 & Appstream. However, only EC2 is considered correct.
In the Route53 icon question - there are multiple versions of the Route53 icon used in different places (do a google image search and you'll see a dozen variant). The icon in the top left ("Pole with two offset rectangles") is used in the console - but this is considered an incorrect answer. The icon in the top right ("Pole with two slightly less offset rectangles") is sometimes used elsewhere and is the only answer considered correct.
Icons are the least of AWS's UX problems. The AWS console is godawful. It should be a case study in terrible design. I hate every second I spend on it.
Route 53 looks like it was designed by the Marquis de Sade. Not only was it designed by a sadist, it looks like it was designed last century.
They’d be better off putting up a text file because then at least the IT guys would already know how to use it. And making changes would be a hell of a lot faster too.
I think the icons actually are cool and futuristic but there are so many of them an average person cannot realistically keep track of them all. I can only assume they're for marketing purposes to show in slide decks or websites.
I also wonder if they painted themselves into a corner early on by having them for their early services. I guess they're a big-boy company and have stopped doing this earlier but who knows.
7/20, and my correct/failed guesses seem uncorrelated with services I've used or ones I never touched. Anecdotal evidence about how arbitrary these icons are.
[+] [-] Dwolb|7 years ago|reply
Additionally, negatively-biased phrasing on a public survey could also attract mostly those with negative views. This would skew your sample even further than solely priming.
With that said, I have no idea what any of those icons are.
[+] [-] revel|7 years ago|reply
Just from my own experience, I have used the overwhelming majority of these services and even worked at Amazon for several years and I could not answer more than a couple of those questions. The icons are so divorced from any real world meaning that when I make systems diagrams in Lucid Charts I use the AWS icons to represent abstract systems rather than the real AWS-specific meaning.
[+] [-] oblio|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hondadriver|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonthepirate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castlecrasher2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thestoicattack|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loblollyboy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 18nleung|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|7 years ago|reply
Some entities have a name and a description field that are immutable on creation, even though they also have a unique id. I now have drop downs everywhere that list "Rds creation wizard VPC" or something long those lines.
Its not clear what fields are drop downs so I have to type stuff into them to see if they'll give me a list of options.
The UI uses the same styles but inconsistent language. In ECS there's a list of entities. To delete an entity you have to go into it and delete all its children. Then the entity disappears.
I know there's engineering reasons for all this, but I feel like they can do better than settle for engineer grade UI.
[+] [-] dkoston|7 years ago|reply
Names and Icons on AWS were made by people who don’t realize who helpful names and icons can be.
If it’s a database, use the cylinder icon that everyone knows is a database and then add some identifier to show which database it is.
If it’s DNS, don’t be too clever and name it Route 53. Name it Amazon Cloud DNS. Then anyone knows how to look for it in the console, web search for it, etc.
If you want something that the marketing folks can feel proud about wasting time on, add the silly name to the descriptive name: Amazon DNS Potato
[+] [-] drfritznunkie|7 years ago|reply
Please no. The unique AWS product names while occasionally inconvenient mean that you can at least find relevant information about them when searching, and you know that someone isn't confusing an AWS product with another platform or another style of deployment.
If you really don't like the AWS product names, then Azure is for you. Now go try to search for help with "Azure web apps" or "Azure sql database". Wade through the posts about locally deployed IIS, SQL server and the like.
[+] [-] wbercx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Twirrim|7 years ago|reply
When things came close to launch, AWS Marketing decided to just roll with those code names. I've a suspicion that some teams deliberately used copyrighted names for their internal pre-launch project names, just to force the matter.
[+] [-] frockington|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] move-on-by|7 years ago|reply
1. Which service would you use for DNS record creation?
A) Route 53
b) Amazon Cloud DNS
I joke, its an extremely low quality question regardless of the name. Some of the questions on the exam were pretty insightful, especially the ones that covered problems and what steps you would take to resolve them. Overall, the AWS associate level certification did feel like a giant marketing ploy, but my company wanted me to have it and paid for me to study and take it, so it was a nice relaxing break from the day-to-day.
[+] [-] QuinnyPig|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maltalex|7 years ago|reply
I actually find myself referring to “Amazon Web Services in Plain English” [0] every once in a while.
[0]: https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english
[+] [-] jerf|7 years ago|reply
However, it is absolutely a reasonable request of a logo that you be able to go from logo to designated product, and while quizzing about details like "which horizontal pole is higher" is definitely a bit of an ask, you should still see a lot of people getting that right from just "feeling" which seems right.
[+] [-] davidjgraph|7 years ago|reply
1) They can't find certain AWS icons (the problem is it's there, they didn't expect it to look like that).
2) They change and move between sets rather a lot. That was more a problem previously, the set hasn't actually changed yet this year.
If there's a designer out there willing to create an alternative set, we're more than willing to add it in and see what people prefer. Probably more constructive than just saying "they are bad", show us something better.
[+] [-] dkarl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschaef|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binarymax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbauman|7 years ago|reply
I wouldn't say the icons are _good_, but I wonder if part of the reason the quiz is so hard is that Amazon doesn't really care if you know what the icons mean anyway. Seems like they're mostly used for branding and marketing, not anything users will see regularly.
[+] [-] userbinator|7 years ago|reply
That said, they're probably extremely easy to generate procedurally:
http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctio...
[+] [-] kabdib|7 years ago|reply
Icons had just come into vogue (yes, there was a time before icons). The CAD system in question used a puck on a big mat to choose functions from a grid of names, which were labels like GRAPH and CONNECT and DEL and so forth. But all-caps names weren't very sexy, so the company decided to replace them with more intuitive icons, cool little pictures of the operations. Getting rid of the tiresome and uncool simple text labels was going to win back market share!
Predictably, users complained that they had a hell of a time trying to figure out which of the tiny, intuitive pictures corresponded to the concrete operations.
The company's response? Supply users with a printed cheat sheet that let them find the icon for each operation. To do a CONNECT, you'd look at the cheat sheet and find the corresponding essentially arbitrary (but intuitive!) squiggle, then search for the intuitive squiggle in a sea of other intuitive squiggles. ("No, not that one!")
[+] [-] MisterTea|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsign|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frockington|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azrobbo|7 years ago|reply
But, I believe that at least two of the questions have incorrect/incomplete answers:
One of the questions that requires a typed answer (instead of multiple choice) shows an icon that is used for both EC2 & Appstream. However, only EC2 is considered correct.
In the Route53 icon question - there are multiple versions of the Route53 icon used in different places (do a google image search and you'll see a dozen variant). The icon in the top left ("Pole with two offset rectangles") is used in the console - but this is considered an incorrect answer. The icon in the top right ("Pole with two slightly less offset rectangles") is sometimes used elsewhere and is the only answer considered correct.
[+] [-] Sir_Cmpwn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|7 years ago|reply
They’d be better off putting up a text file because then at least the IT guys would already know how to use it. And making changes would be a hell of a lot faster too.
[+] [-] Yhippa|7 years ago|reply
I also wonder if they painted themselves into a corner early on by having them for their early services. I guess they're a big-boy company and have stopped doing this earlier but who knows.
[+] [-] aqme28|7 years ago|reply
[1]: https://aws.amazon.com/inspector/
[+] [-] irishsultan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jare|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway0255|7 years ago|reply
Every icon in Google Cloud is a nearly-identical blue hexagon. They might as well not even have icons.