I am working on a web based hosted CRM personal project which I will release to public ones it is done. My goal is to create a CRM with absolutely zero to none learning or training requirement. To do so I am focusing on clean and simple interface. I did some comprising of other CRM's and majority of the time there bloated with bunch of menus and other stuff especially Dynamics CRM if you ever used it.
But this is not about that, during the interface design I started to work on the menu. The problem that arises is that I am using icons back-ended by Tipsy to display tool-tip of the icon description, for example hovering over Dashboard icon will show Tip at the bottom with text: Dashboard or hovering over Contacts icons will show: Clients & Companies tool-tip.
I personally understand what the icons are and all, but for the goal to be achieved it has to be simple for any-one to use no matter the age or sex, just plain simple. The only confusion Icons create is lack of text and some may not always remember what the icons are. Attached is the image of the current Top Menu UI, I would like some professional feedback should I continue the use of icons or should I go with text based navigation instead.
Dashboard UI
Icons Based:
Text Based:
Text Based Simplified: Refer to: http://cl.ly/MZdt