The Visualisation Process:

A first step in the process of designing these would be to identify the various aspects of a given public facility that need to be represented for communication purposes, by graphical symbols that will serve collectively as an interface for the user. The different aspects of this environment would usually include its facilities, its functional and organizational attributes, and certain informative and warning messages. For the sake of convenience we will refer to these various aspects as the 'message areas'. While considering their potentials for visualization into visual representations, the possible representations emerging under these various areas may be classified (refer Fig.1) using the peircean Trichotomic Model of the semiotic process as:
a.Iconic
b.Indexical
c.Arbitrary (being referred here as arbitrary instead of as 'symbolic' in order to avoid a clash with the term graphic symbols).
.

	Classification of Representations in Message Areas (figure1)
	Paradigmatic(Categories of Choice)
	Iconic		Indexical		Arbitrary
Content	Message Area (object)		Message Area (object)		Message Area (object)
	o<-->r		o -->o1-->r		o-- > x -->r
Representation	by similarity		by indirect means		by convention
Visualisation	by designer		by user		by user and designer
Designer/ Producer	direct representation		relational linking		building a code
User/ Perceiver	immediate perception		needs interpretation		needs decifering of a convention
	wholistic	componential	wholistic	componential	wholistic	componential
	Injection	Dispensary	Orthopedics	Emergency	Enquiry	Ambulance

Page 1 Page 3      Page 4: