Description:
Use caseFor years users had been asking for the chore icons in Server Explorer to clearly show the ones which are active and the ones which are not. Finally in version 9 we got that; inactive chores were grey, active chores were orange.
In version 10 these icons were changed so that active and inactive icons are exactly the same colour and exactly the same shape aside inactive ones having a low visibility grey box which is 7 pixels high by 7 pixels wide. On a 1600*900 screen that box equates to 0.0034% of the screen. On a 1920*1080 screen, it's 0.0024% of the screen.
Or put another way, for all intents and purposes the box is invisible.
This flies in the face of the whole reason for using icons which is to provide instant recognition of state or function, and in particular to distinguish between one state and another. The version 10 icons fail to do that spectacularly. Ultimately it does not matter whether the icons conform to a particular corporate colour and style standard if they are not in fact usable.
It would be unwise to underestimate the number of users who expressed anger at that change, particularly those who have been around long enough to remember how long it took to get the version 9 improvement which was then yanked away from them in version 10.
Business justificationThe user wants to do a quick check of their active chores. In version 9 these chores were blindingly obvious and could be identified at a glance. In version 10 the user needs to go down the whole list of chores, one by one, and stare at them (particularly if s/he has a high res monitor) to be sure that the icon is telling them that the chore is on (or off, as the case may be).
Having a chore on when you don't want it to be or off when you don't want it to be can have severe implications on loads of data.
The business implications of this should be obvious.