Visual and Interactive communication - towards a Universal communication language - October 2001

With the world getting more wired with each passing day, most of our activities have come to involve computers and interaction. A wired world means we interact a lot across countries, races and the semantic language barriers.

The ability to enable communicate across the traditional barriers is what the web stands for. The need to communicate across these barriers has given rise to the need to develop a more universally accepted language. Something what Hillman Curtis phrased as " Universal communication language" in one of his book. It is a communication language that is a blend of visual language and the interactive communication.

Interactive Communication determines how people interact with your web presence and the quality of experience it provides them. Visual Communication takes the lead to influence, by its design and content arrangement whether a visitor with go forward to interact with your web presence or not.

Jakob Nielsen in a recent article titled "First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users," outlined - "To discover which designs work best, watch users as they attempt to perform tasks with the user interface." In other words, to engage the visitors flocking to your site, the site needs to communicate visually the promise of containing a value proposition.

The design and content arrangement should also visually communicate values and aspirations that the brand or the corporation stands for. To send out positive signal about your brand on the web, there needs to be a congruity between the semantic and the visual language your website employs to get the message across to the visitors. .

Take the case of Idealake, an upstart Internet solutions providing company, and its belief in clarity. The company have not only spelled it out but the website also communicate visually its faith in clarity. There is a congruity in the communication in the way of semantic and visual language they have employed. As a result the website gives a perception of being at peace with itself.

There are companies, which talk about of values and responsibilities to their consumers, but their website appears all cluttered, is graphic heavy and projects an image of being confused.

Because on web media feeling and sensing are so integrated that the importance of visual language - in contrast to the semantic language- becomes paramount. The importance of visuals will require websites to employ more icons, visual cues, symbolism and a design that is user friendly and communicative. Because these are not only visually soothing but communicate more efficiently and engage the visitor as well. The elements used for visual communication should also visually imply the value inherent in interacting with the website. So, that the visitor is persuaded into interacting with the website.

Once the visual language convinces the visitor to start the interaction, the interactive communication takes over. The Interactive communication, contrary to the visual communication, is more science and less art. Each interaction should provide to the visitor some value and an experience engaging enough to force him to visit again. This value proposition involved in the interactive communication ideally is a combination of a user-friendly navigation, a unique content and it's efficient arrangement.

We are already in the midst of a convergence of communication medium and technologies. Perhaps, very soon we can read our magazine, watch out favorite T.V Show and do our office work on the desktop, laptop or palm top machine. So central to all the communication strategies will be our understanding of human interaction with machine and the visual display, and the evolving behavioral pattern to the visual communication on the screen. Reason enough why the usability experts worldwide are being valued more than the designers and writers.

We are witness to the information revolution that is rendering almost all communication and information dissemination more and more interactive. In that direction, we will have to evolve and educate the users in developing the universal communication language - a communication language that will integrate more and more universally communicable symbols and icons to overcome the semantic language barrier.

A small icon of an envelope implying mail, a small hand held telephone receiver implying contact number, just like the way blue-coloured-underlined text has become a universal convention to visually communicate that it is a hyperlink.

Against such a backdrop, we can already see more than a fleeting similarity between the SMS language used by the mobile phone users and symbol used to communicate by our cave dwelling forefathers.

So does that mean we have to start all over again? Not really, as I see it the process still remains the same, only the focus have shifted more on feedback and, the stakes are higher. We need to draw from all the traditional resources on communication and improve upon it.

It was proved almost three decades earlier, that black fonts are more legible on white background then white on a dark background, by a research on reading by Gallup and outlined by the famous Ogilvy Mather.

This hypothesis holds as true on the web today as it was for communicating in the print media. It is no coincidence that most of the web pages display their content on a white background. Only this time around the fonts employed are required to do more than just communicate semantically and visually. They must also bring about interaction with the website.

Nazim Iqbal