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I am currently designing an app for ordering food. The user is being shown suggestions according which include his favourites, frequently ordered, popular nearby etc. while the favourites and popular nearby fields have commonly identifiable icons, i can't think of one for frequently ordered.

edit: currently used icons (the relevant ones): heart - favourite, flame - trending, clock - delivery time, circling arrows - reorder also, i'm going to be writing the text 'frequently ordered' along with the icon, so the icon doesn't have to be very recognizable but i can't not use an icon since it would break the uniformity as all the other fields have an icon

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  • I think you mean "ordered by frequency" or "ordered by occurrence". I have no metaphor at hand - still looking.
    – virtualnobi
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 12:06
  • @virtualnobi no. i wanted to use an icon for indicating an object which a user has frequently visited but not added to his favourites (heart icon)
    – BatlaDanny
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 12:18
  • So you're looking for "frequently visited"?
    – virtualnobi
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 13:15
  • yes. that does come closest to what i'm trying to implement
    – BatlaDanny
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 13:24
  • Is there a reason you need to have both 'favourites' and 'frequently ordered' as separate items? The items I frequently order at a restaurant are my favourites, that's why I order then frequently :)
    – anotherdave
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 7:44

3 Answers 3

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A related formulation for "frequently ordered" might be "recurring". There are many icons that convey the notion of recurring orders, for some inspiration you could try here.

Alternatively, the reuse of a history icon with the textual label "frequently ordered" might work as well: some samples are here.

The circling arrows seem to be a common theme to these two.

If circling arrows are off limits because they have already been used, how about an icon with several smiley faces? The smiley face would invoke the pleasurable experience of the past order, and the fact there are several of them invokes the "frequent" aspect of this pleasurable experience. I'm sure this is NOT a commonly used icon, but I think it could be easily identified..

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  • the circling arrows are being used in the CTA button for 're-order' in the current version of the app and that seems like a logical usage to me
    – BatlaDanny
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 12:20
  • I edited my answer with an alternative suggestion.
    – Mishax
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 12:30
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It is not the "frequency" which is important for choosing an icon, it is the idea beyond. The idea here is "hey, if everybody want these, you should too"

i suggest you to focus on this idea :

mockup

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups

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  • this is unhelpful for this example, where the desired frequency is the individual user's frequency not a global frequency, so 'famous' or 'most wanted' do not apply.
    – Adam Marshall
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 10:49
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Bookmarking or favouriting an item is a manual action, whereas 'frequently visited' is something automatically calculated for you, so there is real value in both together.

My best suggestion here would be to try and shuffle your icons around to create the combination which makes the most sense for your users.

Example 1:

If you currently use 'heart' for favourite, consider using 'star' or 'bookmark' instead - both are conventional.

If you use star, then it could be that the user rates the item e.g. out of 5.

This would then free up 'heart' to represent 'frequently ordered'.

Example 2:

If you use a 'history' icon elsewhere, e.g. for 'recently ordered', consider using a 'calendar/date' type icon for that instead. This would free up 'history' to represent 'frequently ordered'.

Example 3:

If you use a 'flame' for trending, consider using a trending chart line icon instead, like this. This would free up 'flame', although this makes less sense for favouriting than 'heart', 'star', 'bookmark' or even 'like'.

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