I didn’t realise until recently just how much association I create between an activity and the icon for its application. This has come about because I’ve started using a few new apps (and had others open more frequently than I used to before) and I’ve noticed I’m spending more time than I would like trying to decide which icon to highlight when using Cmd-Tab to switch between apps.
I think this is because too many of the apps are using a stylised planet as part of their icon. The culprits in my case are OmniWeb, Colloquy, NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (the first three all use the Earth as part of their icon). Whereas before, I think my brain had a connection between blue/circle/earth and web-browsing, now I find I have another blue/circle/earth (NetNewsWire) and a purple one (Colloquy) just to confuse issues.
In a somewhat reversed way, I know I have an association with blue/speech-bubble for chat, but because I’ve got a lot of conversation happening in other chat programs (Colloquy and Adium), I sometimes get lost about where I’m trying to go.
Not sure if there is really any point to this post, except as a reminder to myself (and possibly other application developers out there) that choosing an icon for an application is important, especially if it’s one that can expect every day use.