Is the funnel the right icon for filtering?
I'm doing explorations on how to standardise our filtering patterns through gitlab-org/gitlab-services/design.gitlab.com#1424 and I made a few quick mockups where I included an option with a button to show/hide filters:
I came to me naturally to use the funnel icon in that button but then I started thinking: funnels don't actually do any filtering, they just make it easier to pour liquids:
I think the misconception of the funnel and why it's often used as a filter icon comes from things like this:
But even there, it's not a very good analogy. At the very least, the funnel should be a leaky one so that if 100 items went into it but only 10 come out, the remaining 90 items must have gone somewhere else.
So I'm thinking we have two options for the filter icon, the funnel (which we actually call "filter" atm) or the preferences one
Funnel | Preferences |
---|---|
A lot of examples that I explored for inspiration so far use the preferences icon so I think we should go with that one: