Treadmills are becoming more than just a surface for your to run on and exercise. With loads of functions and program controls, it’s getting more and more complex to operate. The picture above is a typical treadmill with buttons and screens that almost resemble a cockpit of a jet fighter. But what if you just want to get started right away? One solution designers came up with is a “Quick Start Button”. It’s purpose is to bypass the setup process and start rolling the treadmill right away.

On the other hand, a treadmill needs to have an emergency “Quick Stop” button, which allow user to stop the machine immediately in case of emergency. Both the “Quick Start” and “Quick Stop” has the same functional priority, only opposite purposes.

Question is, in order to make it easy recognizable and operable, the buttons has to be physically bigger than other controls, and very easy to understand at a quick glance without reading the text label on the button. So they need an intuitive icon.

The “Stop” button icon is relatively easy since there is an international standard “red stroke in a circle” symbol to follow. But it is trickier for the quick start button.

Back to the example treadmill in the photo, there’re two design decisions I find puzzling:

(1) Instead of the standard red colour, the Stop button is in orange.

(2) For the “Quick Start” button, it make sense to use green to imply a positive message of “go ahead”. But the icon is a 90° rotation of the stop button. It’s creative, but not very easy to understand especially for first time users.

Suggestions:

• green circle with a solid dot inside
• the standard “Power On” icon (Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol)
• an illustration of a running man