A sidebar to the “Apple’s Lisa: A personal Office System” report published in January 1983, pp. 9.

You can see that Lisa dramatically uses various symbols to make it clear what action (if any) is needed in a given situation.

The “Wait” sign appears whenever the operation may be lengthy, and it mentions how you can cancel the operation if you change your mind.

The “Note” sign often advises you that the action you requested is incomplete in some way.

The “Stop” sign is very dramatic.

There are other message forms we have not shown here.