Kepler Symbology

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This is the place to discuss kepler symbology during the re-design process. I've laid the foundation for reducing the number of vastly different symbols into a more unified, easier to remember and easier to recognize set. However, this is a minimal set and will need to be expanded but the goal is still to keep to a small set of simple symbols that use the proposed (limited) color set.

Please see the recent proposed Kepler redesign.

The usability objectives regarding symbology as listed in the proposed re-design are:

• Use a limited number of symbols/shapes.
• Use simple shapes.
• Use standard/known symbols or ones that are easily learned.
• Add some uniformity.

Feedback from a discussion on symbology at the recent Estes Park, CO meeting held May 2005 included:

• need to expand # of icons in current propopsal
• consider mechanism for communicating both composite form and its function (kind of composite) (Laura will work with the graphic designer to produce design)
• add "external program" icon (Laura will work with the graphic designer to produce design)
• _need to define small set of types of computations (Need feedback from the team on this!)_
• add "graphs" icon to display set of icons which would include scatter plots, bar graphs etc. (Laura will work with the graphic designer to produce the design)
• consider defining small set of atomic actors that go across ontologies and small set of icons for ecology domain -- LLD> issue here would still be that some kind of functions might be represented differently across ontologies
• consider tying symbols to semantics in ontology - LLD> but this might still lead to lots of icons
• consider providing a baseline set of symbols while controlling color but allow others to add their own symbols -- LLD> this could result in a large number of symbols and also could result in multiple symbols representing the same concept.

All feedback is welcome and encouraged, but what I need most here are suggestions for expanding the computation category to cover several top level types of computation such as integrals, summations etc. We will definitely add an "R" represention which will just be an R. I would also like to add "statistics" as a high level category.

What other types of high level computations do you think need to be included? Remember we are trying to keep to a small set of symbols that specific actors can be categorized to.

Add comments to the bottom of this and preface them with your initials or name etc. Thanks!