A portable electronic device (10) can include a user interface (12) enabling the representation of a characteristic of an application using a user perceptible representation of the application on a presentation device (14, 18 or 20) and a processor (15) coupled to the presentation device. The processor can be programmed to enable the selection (102) of a menu containing a representation of the application and non-textually vary (104) the user perceptible representation of the application based on a change in a characteristic of the application from an initial state of the application. The characteristic can be a frequency of use of the application or a power consumption measure of the application. Note, the portable electronic device can be any number of devices including, but not limited to a cellular phone, a camera phone, a video phone, a PDA, a two-way radio, a messaging device, or a laptop computer for example.