alt Hacker News> identification increasingly depends on colour and shape.
If only they would stop there. These design terrorists won't even let us have that much; Google's Android apps all use the same 4-color-rainbow scheme. Not only did they get rid of the ability to visually identify the icons by color, but you can't even really identify them by shape because applying four highly constrasting colors to a simple shape breaks up its silhouette into something that is not quickly recognisable at a glance. It's as though they're intentionally trying to make the icons have as little functional utility as they possibly can.
The worst part is, when computer screens were monochrome or had only 16 colors, (and perhaps 16 pixels a side) to work with, designers managed to create more distinct icons or pictograms. Perhaps they may not have looked as elegant as a set of items on a collector's display case, but they helped the end user quickly zero in on the part of the screen they were interested in.