User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Is there any research done on whether the direction an icon faces matters in the recognition of the icon representation? In other words and with a specific case:
Would a left oriented search icon (one with the glass of the search icon in the left top corner) be more recognizable and clicked on then a right oriented search icon, or vice versa?
To answer your question: Is there any research: Not exactly. I am aware of research by NNGroup about the layout and presentation of search boxes with their labels and icons. Nothing about which way the icon is leaning.
But may I say I think it's very insightful of you to ask this question.
Images CAN have direction. That is, images can "point". This can be explicit, as with an arrow, or implicit, as with the direction in which eyes are looking or the direction in which a face is turned.
A picture of a magnifying glass definitely has direction, much like an arrow. The round glass is like an arrowhead, and the handle is like an arrow's tail. Together, they point left or right.
There's a nice little free e-book by Spencer Goldade (a former colleague, we have both since gone to work elsewhere). You can download the e-book here and then check out chapter 4. It's a light read, not an in-depth discussion.
Hope that helps, if only to confirm that your instinct is right: the direction of the magnifying glass does matter. Descending, now, purely into opinion: when the icon is outside the right side of the Search box I lean the icon in, toward the box, suggesting to use the box. When the icon is inside the box, I right-align it and lean it out, suggesting the action that is to come. Remember, this is just my opinion. That, plus $2, will buy you a cup of coffee.
More importantly is NN/g's advice to include the word "Search" along with the icon, because "icon-only search has some significant disadvantages" when the search box is in a non-standard location.
By the way, there are other factors at play, as well. In the examples you posted, none of the magnifying glasses are "upside down." They are all oriented as if ready for the user to reach out and grab the handle. Ask yourself: if direction didn't matter, then wouldn't at least SOME of these images be "upside down"?
The magnifying glass is a skeuemorphic icon.
Classic skeuemorphic design principles suggest a right handed orientation will feel more natural to users because most people are right handed and would pick up the glass that way:
The magnifying glass is so widely used it really doesn't matter that much in practice, and users are not more or less likely to understand the meaning between one orientation and the other.
If you look a the 100 or so magnifying glass icons you have in your question (which is a fun collection) you'll notice that the key is that they are all fairly consistent representations of a magnifying glass...essentially a circle with a stem sticking out.
I don't have research on this, but I bet if you randomly chose 100 people and showed half the icon facing one way, and half the icon facing the other way, you wouldn't see any statistical significance in terms of being able to identify. The point is that it's an identifiable icon, and it's orientation doesn't appear to change what it is meant to represent. A magnifying glass icon still looks like a magnifying glass regardless of which way it leans.
As such, I'd argue this is purely a visual design decision that should be made based on what looks best for your particular needs.
Visually, it's sometimes nice to have the icon 'lean in' to the text. Perhaps if the icon is to the left of your field, it leans right. Perhaps if it is after, it leans left. That's but just one thing to consider.
