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Apr 5, 2021

I'm curious what books, articles, fields, experts, etc. there might be on creating such visual languages (from Feynman diagrams to bar charts...). ccing other people who might have thought about this a lot:

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· Apr 5, 2021

Another example of a "visual language" is the Feyman Diagram. Has anyone done a deep dive into how to best design and semi-standardize a visual language for a field? Not just a one-offs. Best practices etc.? (Perhaps @EdwardTufte ?)

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

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@metaviv

Very quick take… Such languages are usually created by practitioners to solve problems in their work. Standardization is often an organic process: others will adopt the notations/representations they find useful. Iverson is one useful source: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.114

6:13 PM · Apr 5, 2021TweetDeck

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Yes! "Notation as a tool for thought" (both personal and collective) is part of it. Great reference, and I agree re. standardization; though I imagine there are ways to accelerate it (e.g. by providing tooling to make easy/fast—too much friction can kill notations).