As the use of graphical user interfaces expands into new areas, icons are becoming an increasingly important aspect of GUIs. Oddly, little research has been done into the costs and benefits associated with using icons. A set experiments was conducted in which various attributes of icons were examined, including simple icon borders, icon "quality" and set size (number of "distractor" icons). An eye tracking study of the task was also conducted to examine the icon search strategies of computer users. Based on the results of the studies, two models were then constructed in ACT-R/PM to carry out the same task as in the experiments. The final iteration of the models was predictive of human performance in icon search tasks. Insights into icon design and computational modeling of icon search are discussed.