Representation and learnability in visual languages for Web-based interpersonal communication

Computer-based visual languages have been developed primarily in order to help people program and operate computers. Now that many people in the world have personal computers with good graphics and Internet connections, we are seeing a great deal of informal electronic visual communication via Web pages. More formal visual languages can be expected to appear on the Internet in the near future. Visual languages offer various possible advantages to textual e-mail, such as permitting communication between people who do not speak or read the same textual language and such as permitting the incorporation of rich graphical material. Designing these languages requires making some important decisions about ontology, visual representation, interactivity, and how users learn the language, as well as about the more traditional issues of language design such as syntax. The power of the computer to generate alternative views of a language object can be harnessed by incorporating an iconic-symbolic continuum as a basic representational axis. Concreteness of representation in limited domains can be achieved by the use of microworld-like simulations. However, the objects in these simulations can convey richer meanings by associations with real-world people and objects. This paper presents a variety of research questions and briefly attempts to answer a few of them