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Add colors to the icons in Power BI portal

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Aleksey Eremenko's profile image

Aleksey Eremenko on 18 May 2023 19:21:27

The Power BI portal shows objects (datasets, reports, workspaces, etc) with an associated "type" icon. The icon is a wireframe. Why is the icon a wireframe? They are impossible to tell apart with a glance. What is the use of having ultrawide screens that display thousands of colors when the applications on those screens are essentially monochrome black-and-white? I know the push is to return to a "clients-working-on-a-single-mainframe" model of computing and to go away from personal devices as a whole, but can we at least keep the design principles that keep us from regressing away from rich-color graphical user interfaces and returning to command line monochrome user interfaces?


Either remove the wireframe icons, as they are indistinguishable from each other and are useless and annoying, or add colors or some other kind of distinguishing characteristics to the iconography of the portal. Silhouettes are a fundamental aspect of design, so why does the design team who made these icons appear completely ignorant of this very basic design principle?


If I want to look at some monochrome wireframe symbols that convey the exact same information in a better way and that I can actually tell apart at a glance, there is the "Type" column that conveys the same information as the icon-style "Type" column except it uses Latin characters that I can read instead of mystifying iconography that is indistinguishable and meaningless without a mouseover.