You arrive on a page--like this blog--and you decide you don't want to be there--which would be very unlike this blog <smile>. So, you click the little "back" arrow in the upper left of your browser and return to where you had been.
Easy. Well-known. Common.
But how do you visually tell people to back up? Specifically, how do you graphically communicate with just a couple of scribbles that this button will take them back a few steps?
I started with the image in the upper left (below) because it looks a lot like the "expand" button on video players. My thinking was that by stepping back you are expanding what you can see. ...trouble is, people assume that the button means "make full screen" instead of "back up." Right. That makes sense.
Images for Going Back
So I added an arrow pointing back at you (bottom right).
"Why is it pointing at me? What do I have to do with that button?" my coworker Barb asked me when I showed it to her.
<sigh>
So, it's back to the drawing board for me.
Back Icon?
How would you communicate with an icon in the picture above that clicking it will take you ten steps backward into the parking lot?
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester
P.S. Next week, friends. Next week I hope to share this project with you. Unfortunately, being stuck on the "back button" is slowing me down.
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