I was checking out Audible’s Device Center today when I saw this table:

2, 3 and 4? hmmm…

It looks fine at first glance, but when you see that the formats are represented by numbers that audible came up with, you have a problem.

After a quick search on the site, I found out that they mean the following:

Oh, OK.

I don’t understand why they decided to use numbers instead of just writing the formats’ names. The numbers don’t even link to a help page, show their meaning in a tool tip or anything like that. Just images.

In my opinion, it would be more helpful if it was more descriptive like this:

More helpful, no?

Or, if using those icons was really necessary, then something like:

Using the conventional question mark that leads to the explanation

Never depend on your site’s users to look for the meanings of icons, abbreviations or anything that isn’t familiar that you use in your site’s interface. If you really need to do that, then at least make those vague items lead to or contain the explanation.