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There's nothing wrong with the symbols. Your washing machine is the one that should have a printed table of them somewhere.

Take a look on those symbols: "A", "B", "C". A triangle with the basis moved up, two circles with a straight side, and an open circumference arc. They were abstract into complete meaningless, yet they are great for their use-case.

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> Your washing machine is the one that should have a printed table of them somewhere.

Neither of my laundry machines have any symbols on their control panels, only printed English. The only symbols I can find on them are the Explosion, Fire, and Shock warning stickers inside the rim of the doors.

I think OP meant "should" as in "ought to" not "should" as in "probably does."

fwiw the Roman alphabet seems pretty suboptimal and the impossibility of switching is an example of a coordination problem, as opposed to an example of optimal design

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