Comment by noduerme

I've followed and agreed with this OP's critique for awhile.. it's also a justifiable and entertaining take. As a UI designer for 30 years, I have a sympathetic but slightly different view.

I grew up in the 80s with DOS software, when dropdown menus were new and our IBM PC didn't even have a mouse. Since the design idea emerged of using an icon in a menu, which I'd probably locate to the Apple menu on the 128k Mac, my whole life I've seen this push/pull between phases of design and various fads that have emphasized either information density or some kind of simplified graphic/hieroglyphic gloss of the language and intent.

The gloss that works, imho, isn't precisely what has iconic meaning, as the OP postulates. It's what the user becomes familiar with. There's a subtle difference there. An arbitrary icon can be made to mean something over time. But that has to be an intentional process, and it should be tied to a larger theory of the branding and iconography of the company. Otherwise, it's probably worse than useless, even if it does literally signify the action.

Lately, in the last 10 years, I've found myself doing hybrids. I treat icons in selection modes as something like an emoji. If an icon is so universally understandable that no text is necessary, I might prefer it. Otherwise, it would be included only if I need to draw a user's attention to something more than the other items. For example, an extra icon next to a pending issue waiting for approval.

When available too, I'd much rather show a keyboard shortcut than an icon. That's useful information for most users, instead of decoration.

People who don't design for a living often think decoration is design, or vice versa. Decoration is antithetical to good design. And good design is never decorative. If it's not either informational, or what I'd call "aspirationally informational", in that it's training the user to recognize a meaningful design artifact, then it should go. Decorations belong in illustration and background art, to tie the piece together. Not in UI.

I think the main thing is to consider these design choices. Does the icon help someone identify and navigate to something they need to do more quickly? No one is perfectly correct, making that call. It's one of those things where asking the question and thinking about it is 90% of the effort.