Lines, Blobs, Crosses and Arrows: Diagrammatic Communication with Schematic Figures

In producing diagrams for a variety of contexts, people use a small set of schematic figures to convey certain context specific concepts, where the forms themselves suggest meanings. These same schematic figures are interpreted appropriately in context. Three examples will support these conclusions: lines, crosses, and blobs in sketch maps; bars and lines in graphs; and arrows in diagrams of complex systems. 1 Some Ways that Graphics Communicate Graphics of various kinds have been used all over the world to communicate, preceding written language. Trail markers on trees, tallies on bones, calendars on stellae, love letters on birch bark, maps on stone, and paintings in caves are some of the many remnants of graphic communications. Many graphics appear to convey meaning less arbitrarily than symbols, using a number of spatial and pictorial devices. Maps are a prime example, where graphic space is used to represent real space. Graphic space can also be used metaphorically to represent abstract spaces. Even young children readily use space to express orderings of quantity and preference (Tversky, Kugelmass, and Winter, 1991). Space can be used to convey meanings at different levels of precision. The weakest level, the categorical level, uses space to separate entities into groups, such as lists of players on two baseball teams or, in writing, the letters belonging to different words. Greater precision is needed for ordinal uses of space, as in listing restaurants in order of preference or children in order of birth. Often, the distances between elements as well as their order is indicated, as in the events of history or the skill of athletes where the differences between events or athletes are meaningful in addition to the ordering between them. Space is not the only graphic device that readily conveys meaning. The elements in space do so as well. Many elements bear resemblance to the things they convey. Both ancient and modern examples abound. Ideographic languages conveyed things, beings, and even actions through schematic representations of them, just as airport signs and computer icons do today. Ideograms and icons also represent through figures of depiction, concrete sketches of concrete things that are parts of or associated with what is to be conveyed, as a scepter to indicate a king or scissors to indicate delete. 222 Barbara Tversky et al. 2 Meaningful Graphic Forms Our recent work on diagrams suggests another kind of element that readily conveys meaning in graphics, more abstract than sketches of things and beings, yet more concrete than arbitrary symbols like letters. In his self-proclaimed, but also generally recognized, “authoritative guide to international graphic symbols,” Dreyfuss (1984) organized graphic symbols by content, such as traffic, geography, music, and engineering. But Dreyfuss also organized symbols by graphic form, notably circle, ellipse, square, blob, line, arrow, and cross, all in all, only 14 of them, some with slight variants. These graphic forms appear in a number of different contexts, with meanings varying appropriately. Circles, for example, represent gauges, plates, warnings, and nodes, among other things. Lines stand for barriers, piers, railroads, streets, limits, boundaries, divisions, and more. We will call this class of graphic forms that readily convey more abstract meanings “meaningful graphic forms.” Why only a dozen or so forms, and why these forms? One characteric of these forms is their relative simplicity. They are abstractions, schematizations, without individuating features. They have a useful level of ambiguity. As such, they can stand for a wide variety of more specialized, more individuated forms. A circle can stand for closed spaces of varying shapes, twoor three-dimensional. When the individuating features are removed from a closed form, something like a circle is left. A line can stand for a one-dimensional path or a planar barrier, of varying contours. When the individuating features are removed from a path, something like a line remains. A cross can represent the intersection of two lines. These abstract forms can take on more particular meanings in specific contexts. Using them seems to indicate that either the individuating feature omitted are not relevant or that the context can supply them. In many cases, the forms themselves are embellished with more individuating features, especially when similar forms appear in the same context. Another perspective is to regard graph readers as implicit mathematicians in interpreting depictions. In other words, they interpret the primitive shapes in terms of their mathematical properties. A circle is (a) the simplest, and (b) the most efficient form (shortest path) that encloses an area of a given size. Thus interpreting a circle in a diagram invites the inference that nothing more is to be specified than that it depicts a closed area. A blob departs from simplicity and efficiency in an unsystematic fashion. Thus, it invites the additional inference that the area depicted is not a circle or other systematic shape. Similarly, a straight line is the simplest and most efficient form connecting two points. Thus using the thinnest reasonable line invites the inference that an edge is indicated rather than an area, and making it straight invites the inference that nothing more is to be specified than that the ends are connected/related. A squiggle departs from simplicity and efficiency in an unsystematic fashion. Thus it invites the additional inference that the area depicted is not a straight line or other systematic shape. These schematic forms, then, seem to depict abstractions, as if denoting concepts such as closed form or path. Yet they are not arbitrary symbols like the word concepts they loosely correspond to. Rather their very forms suggest those more general concepts. A circle is a closed form, and something like a circle would be obtained from averaging shapes of many closed forms. Similarly, a line is extended in oneLines, Blobs, Crosses and Arrows 223 dimension or on a plane, and something like a line would be obtained from averaging many one-dimensional or planar extensions. 3 Sketching Route Maps: Lines, Curves, Crosses and Blobs Depictive Element Use in Diagram Descriptive Element landmark name of building or path straight path “go down” curved path “follow around” various intersections “turn,” “take a,”