AWS Icon Quiz (opens in new tab)

If you pass this, a team of medical professionals will be sent to your home to peacefully euthanize you, as it is the only ethical choice to end your suffering.

This reminded me of AWS in plain English https://expeditedsecurity.com/aws-in-plain-english/

Oh hell I have spent the last decade working with AWS and I still have no idea what any of the icons are. They are all complete shit. Literally the worst.

To be fair I can't remember half the product names other than the core ones either. Elastic Banana or whatever. Maybe Dynamo Donkey. I just don't know any more.

Edit: I'm also an AWS Architect Professional or whatever it's called now. Shows how a monkey can pass the certs eh?

The only reason I can play this game is because "Icons with Labels" is impossible to deal with in the AWS console. I _really_ wish I could just set the labels myself.

"AWS Simple Email Service." Were you worried I would forget it's an AWS service? Or worried that I wouldn't remember it's simple, or a service? Do you offer any other email service? Can I please just rename the label to "SES"?

First world cloud console problems, I guess.

We are excited to introduce the AWS Elastic Icon Identifier, a service designed to simplify your AWS Management Console navigation by quickly identifying AWS service icons. This service offers Icon Recognition, enabling you to instantly identify an uploaded AWS icon; an Icon Library with a continuously updated collection of AWS service icons; and API Integration, allowing you to programmatically identify AWS icons in your applications. Additionally, it ensures High Availability with extra redundancy layers and built-in Fault Tolerance to handle unforeseen issues without service impact. This not only accelerates the learning curve for new users but also helps experienced users efficiently identify unfamiliar icons or refresh their memory on lesser-used services.

The pricing is designed to be cost-effective for all users, with a Free Tier of 100 icon identifications per month, a Pay-as-you-go plan at $0.01 per icon after the first 100, and a Premium Plan at $10/month for 1000 identifications, with extra identifications at $0.008 per icon. All plans include unlimited access to the Icon Library and API Integration, as well as High Availability and Fault Tolerance features at no additional cost. For more details, visit our Pricing page on the AWS website.

Start simplifying your AWS experience with the Elastic Icon Identifier today!

As a designer, I just want to say that if your instinct is to rag on these symbols for being incomprehensible, go ahead and try your hand at one or two. It may be humbling.

Illustrating abstract concepts that are similar to other, related abstract concepts is extremely difficult. Remember that it's got to be legible in a footprint of a couple dozen pixels on a side. When you're done, make sure it isn't close enough to any other AWS product symbols that customers would get confused. Also, run it by a committee of people who aren't designers, and are proud of that fact. If they are in a senior position, attempt to integrate their feedback, no matter how idiotic, into your design, because nobody's going to fight for a little thing like an icon symbol.

I stopped making logos, it's a really difficult and thankless job. Designing apps for complex use cases is way simpler.

Where do these icons come from they don't match what's used in the AWS console at all.

So many of these are weird because I mostly know of their icons from the main console page which apparently doesn't match the ones this quiz is pulling from because it said the S3 icon isn't green and the IAM icon is a key. In the console it's green and an ID with a lock icon on it at least for me.

For people despairing about their ability to score on this quiz asking such simple things as what color is the S3 icon. The quiz is using the Cloud Formation Designer icons not the ones you see every day in the console or in the icon asset pack from the AWS site you might be using in your architecture diagrams. So unless you spend a load of time using that to build your CFTs rejoice you shouldn't be surprised you're getting them wrong since they are not consistent across those locations.

That's why I think Adobe has made the smart move. They simply use English as the icon, color as the impression.

You can guess via the English if you are unfamiliar with the icon. And easy to spot via the color if you already know the icon.

Let's say if I forget the characters in the Illustrator icon. But I can recognize the icon is Illustrator because of its orange color.

I have red green color blindness (deuteranopia) and i have no idea if my answer is right or wrong on until i change my monitor settings to high saturation. (I usually turn that off because it messes a lot with other colors)

How do you actually come up with good icons for these things?

I can imagine a few for things like sns, sqs, and lambda, but what's the right icon for kinesis?

I tried my level best and got 2/20. I repeated with random guesses and got 5/20. I have used AWS on-and-off since 2018.

AWS icons are next to Egyptian hieroglyphs in difficulty. Google iconography isn't so bad (but bad enough still.)

I want to take this quiz, but why do I have to click three times to get to the next question instead of one?

I've contributed and/or led development on at least 4 different AWS consoles and have used AWS every day for the last 10 years, with 8 of those working at AWS. Still only got 6 right on the quiz.

That said, AWS is transitioning away from those 3D logos. I just wish they'd transition away from Amazon vs AWS name prefix confusion. I've read the internal notes on why they do that, but the reasoning never clicked for me and I still have no idea without looking it up.

The person that designed these icons should be paid less. Maybe Bezos did it himself

I actually think that AWS icons are pretty decent. If you’ve used GCP, you know what I’m talking about

Is there no way to see the correct answers after finishing the quiz?

Cool quiz feels like it might be a psy op from https://www.antimetal.com/

AWS should add this to their Certifications offering.

Sometimes it feels like having 2000 products with obscure names and overlapping responsibilities is the end goal

I got 2/20 after randomly guessing.

Should they even have any icons? Most of them don't really convey meaning, and there are so many, and many similar (rectangular prisms in different orientations), that it's impossible to remember them.

> Dried arterial blood red

... Horrifying

I got 3/20, because I've never used AWS professionally.

>Your Final Score Was: 4/20 Skill Level: Noob

What do people actually think of this UI? These icons give a futuristic but also depressing look at the same time.

Loll makes me feel like a bad engineer

I have not used AWS at that level, but are these actually real?

Haha that's impossible. They all look the same

I hope this is made by an obsessive graphic designer at AWS who's lost one too many arguments.

This was hilarious. Some of descriptions are great. "Dried arterial blood" is a nice vivid color descriptor.

It really puts into context how meaningless these icons are. I log into AWS all the time and did terrible on this quiz (4/20), despite having seen some of these icons hundreds of times at least.

I've been an AWS Hero for a decade, and I only got 5 out of 20 (and I was only sure on 1, the other 4 were guesses).

Obviously this is a joke to point out how useless the icons are, but I'd have thought working with them for so long I'd at least know a few of them.

It definitely feels like Amazon had some intern project that generated 'spatial catpchas' (prove you are human by picking the stacked blue boxes) and decided to re-use it for every icon.

Hint for those who are struggling: Guess randomly to improve your score.

Made it about 1 question in before I realized it was over my head

Love me some good satire.

I don't work with AWS a lot but I thought I could probably score a few points by following their rules for their color coding: orange for compute services, blue for DB related, green for other service management related and red for storage.

I got 6.

Why tf is Route 53 the same colour as compute services?

Pretty much the only AWS logo I can recognize immediately is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Electoral_Action

Didnt they retire these in favor of the vector icons?

Repost of the old google doc quiz?

https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1026568631214198784

I got 9/20 and got called a noob - glad I'm not the only one that had a lower than perhaps expected score despite using AWS daily for years and years. Not going to miss those icons though.

> 5/20

I use a variety of AWS services every day. I actually got a higher score than I was expecting.

Now I am very curious about how AWS made their icons. I work in AWS everyday and can barely tell any part. I thought Google was terrible...

I don't know that I should be angry or relieved that I only got half of them right. I've been working with AWS since it existed.

This deserves a prize of some sort. Genius.

Now if yEd had a way to search in the icon library... the way services are grouped is completely incomprehensible.

They also changed their icons quite a few times in the past... I agree though that they're bonkers

3/20 Have been using AWS since S3

I’m convinced the AWS icons were made by people who don’t realize how helpful names and icons can be for devs

This is making me feel like I should turn in my Certified AWS DevOps Engineer badge.

The comments start my day with a lot of lol

Now do it with the 2021 icons

Looks like i'm a noob

my score was 5/20, every question in this quiz is uncanny :D

just realized I’m so bad at AWS

gotta love aws ux