Beyond boxes and arrows

Visual modelling languages and notation systems from the arts

Some people collect Pokemon cards. I collect elephant figurines. I also collect models and frameworks, and on this occasion of joining the Eclectic Service Design Advent Calendar, I’ve pulled out a couple of visual modelling languages and notation systems from a side drawer of that collection.

To my fellow UX and service designers — Enjoy, and happy holidays!

On the website you can find descriptions of techniques like scratchies and backspinning, with examples of techniques by DJs who have left their mark on the art form over the years.

A grid-based system works well here, as the style of music is based on counting beats, with stroke patterns and iconography used to express different sounds.

I appreciate the simplicity of this system — it feels like you could have grid sheets on hand, and jot down ideas as they come to you. The speed at which you can annotate, and the ease in which you can ‘edit’ so that the act supports the iterative nature of fleshing out your ideas, are key factors for how you use a notation system.

Compare that to these images of the Beauchamp-Feuillet notation, a dance notation system invented in the 1680s at the court of Louis XIV.

It captures

and what I find enchanting is how the dance notation is integrated into the sheet music — the score acts as a timeline, and sometimes the bars morph into dance.

Indeed, it’s a fun example of a language that extends an established system (sheet music). I imagine the learning curve is steep, with a gap between those who can read it and those who can write it. Its intricacy hints that it’s optimized for preservation, with plenty of pomp and flair.

Based on the work of Rudolf Laban, Laban movement analysis and Labonotation is a more contemporary example, developed primarily in the domain of dance and extended to health and scientific fields.

Juggling has both visual and numerical notation systems. Each one highlights a different set of aspects to consider when juggling, such as when the object should be caught in your hand. I imagine that once you start ‘speaking’ a particular language, it becomes your mental model.

There’s software that can generate simulations based on these systems, which is pretty cool. It could speed up the development of new tricks, if you could program an avatar before learning it yourself.

Let’s look at another music example.

With so many elements to express, these are great examples of a coherent, composite system. Each of them look quite different, and I wonder if you’re familiar with the music and rituals, you’re able to read them like being comfortable with dialects of a language you speak.

The scores remind me that being aesthetically pleasing is a desirable quality in a visual language.

There’s beauty in how communities encapsulate knowledge to advance their practice, and what interests me in particular about modeling languages and notation systems is their utility as design tools. Different tools give us different ways to grapple with material, which creates space for new possibilities to emerge.

And the next time you want to geek out together, we could go through my collection of cookbooks. I have a whole bunch that I’ll never cook from, some in languages that I don’t even read, just for the enjoyment of how the chef’s worldview is encoded in the IA of the book…

Further reading:

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