Car Metaphors

I read a new article by Jacob Nielsen on overloaded commands and wondered how can it be that in 2012, at least two decades after Interface Design started to be considered a profession, one should write about incorrectness of using the same command (button, icon) to “achieve different (but similar) results” and can provide examples from the world’s leading IT companies.
And then I saw the tweet

@mariuswatz The “X” button in the Facebook message does not mean “delete”. It means “archive”. Really, Facebook?

I looked over the shoulder of the nearest facebook user …

… indeed, X for archiving. It is not different (but similar), not even just different, but exactly the opposite. I think Jacob Nielsen can fire himself, because in 2012 as in 1993, the WWW is still made by X-Files fans.

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