(Illustrated above) A scientist navigates a visualization in her analysis application that displays the results of a clinical study as they relate to known functional pathways of human biology. Different elements of these biological pathways are represented as specialized, interconnected, iconic symbols, which become highlighted based on their relationship to the clinical data set that she is investigating.

An architect appreciates that her new building modeling application incorporates a large selection of symbols that are conventionally used in architectural drawings, along with some potentially useful new ones.

A financial trader has customized certain tables in his trading application to include categorical icons based on a row’s contents. During stressful times in the trading day, he values how these small cues allow him to quickly interpret incoming information without scanning many specifics.

How are symbolic visual languages currently being used in the larger professions and industries that your team is targeting?

What symbologies are targeted individuals familiar with from interactions with other products and other life experiences?

How might your team use these known conventions as a starting point to envision meaningful and branded symbolic visual languages in your application concepts?

What larger design trends and advanced analogies to other domains could influence your ideas about how symbology could take shape in your computing tool?

Where could symbolic information representation be an effective means of design communication in your team’s functionality concepts and information representations? What clarifying and enhancing value could symbols provide in various situations?

What information rich and real estate constrained functional areas could benefit from iconic communication of application content? How might perceptually salient cues call out important information?

Where could symbolic representations improve the interpretation of instructions and textual descriptions?

How might your requirements for learnability in various functional areas influence your decisions about where to apply meaningful symbolic cues?

How might your team’s design responses for symbolic languages relate to your ideas about illustrative content?

How might your team envision the symbolic communication in your application concepts as an overall system that is a complementary element of a larger aesthetic direction and brand?

What are the demographics in your targeted markets? How might your concepts for symbolic content be interpreted by different cultural audiences?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?