User:Mikaly/LoCoS

The Lovers Communication System (LoCoS) is a universal visible language developed by the graphic/sign designer Yukio Ota (太田幸夫) in Japan in 1964. It may serve as a usable, useful, and appealing basis for mobile phone applications that can provide capabilities for communication among people who do not share a spoken language. LoCoS differs from alphabetic natural languages in that the semantic reference (sometimes called “meaning”) and the visual form are closely related. LoCoS focuses on the following aspects:


 * 1) Easy to learn with a few basics. The learning curve is not steep, and users should be able to easily guess correctly at the meaning of new signs.
 * 2) Easy to display; the signs should be relatively simple.
 * 3) Robustness. People should be able to understand the sense of the language without knowing all signs.
 * 4) Suitability for mass media and the general public. People may find it challenging, appealing, mysterious, and fun.

LoCoS is described in detail at the special Website established by Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A): http://clients.amanda.com/locos/.

Basics of LoCoS
LoCoS is an artificial, non-verbal, generally non-spoken, visible language system designed for use by any human being to communicate with others who may not share spoken or written natural languages. Individual signs may be combined to form expressions and sentences in somewhat linear arrangements.

[image here] Figure 1: Individual and combined signs.

The signs may be combined into complete LoCoS expressions or sentences, formed by three horizontal rows of square areas typically reading from left to right. This arrangement brings up a culture/localization issue: Many, but not all symbols could be flipped left to right for readers/writers used to right-to-left verbal languages. The main contents of a sentence are placed in the center row. Signs in the top and bottom rows act as adverbs and adjectives, respectively. Looking ahead to the possible use of LoCoS in mobile devices with limited space for sign display, a mobile-oriented version of LoCoS (m-LoCoS) can use only one line. The grammar of the signs is similar to English (subject-verb-object). This aspect of the language, also, is an issue for those users used to other paradigms from natural verbal languages.

Motivations for Universal Visible Messaging
m-LoCoS could be used in a universal visual messaging application, as opposed to text messaging. People who do not speak the same language can communicate with each other. People who need to interact via a user interface (UI) that has not been localized to their own language normally would find the experience daunting. People who speak the same language but want to communicate in a fresh new medium may find LoCoS especially appealing, e.g., teen-agers and children. People who may have some speech or accessibility issues may find m-LoCoS especially useful.

For the developing world, there is remarkable growth in the use of mobile phones. China has over 300 million phones, larger than the USA population, and India is growing rapidly [3]. People seem to be willing to spend up to 10% of their income for phones and service, which is often their only link to the world at large [3]. Literacy levels are low, especially familiarity with computer user-interfaces [3]. Thus, if mobile voice communication is expensive and unreliable, mobile messaging may be slower but cheaper, and more reliable. Texting may be preferred to voice communication in some social settings. m-LoCoS may make it easier for people in developing countries to communicate with each other and with those abroad. The fact that LoCoS can be learned quickly makes it an appealing choice.

In the industrialized world, young people (e.g., ages 2-25) have a high aptitude for learning new languages and user-interface paradigms [3]. It is a much-published phenomenon that young people like to text-message, in addition to, and sometimes in preference to talking on their mobile phones. In Japan, additional signs, called emoticons have been popular for years. In fact, newspaper accounts chronicle the rise of gyaru-moji (“girl-signs”) - a “secret” texting language of symbols improvised by Japanese teenage girls. They are a mixture of Japanese syllables, numbers, mathematical symbols, and Greek characters. Even though gyaru-moji takes twice as long for input as standard Japanese, they are still popular [4]. This phenomenon suggests that young people might enjoy sign-messaging using LoCoS. The signs might be unlike anything they have used before, they would be easy to learn, they would be expressive, and they would be aesthetically pleasing.

Design Implications and Design Challenges
The design implications for developing m-LoCoS are that the language must be simple and unambiguous, input must occur quickly and reliably, and several dozen m-LoCoS signs must fit onto one mobile-device screen. Another challenge is that LoCoS as a system of signs must be extended for everyday use. Currently, there are about 1000 signs, as noted in the guidebook published in Japanese [5]. However, these signs are not sufficient for many common use scenarios - many more are needed. The new signs to be added cannot be arbitrary, but should follow the current patterns of LoCoS and be appropriate for modern contexts a half-century after its invention. Even supposedly universal, timeless sign systems like those of Otto Neurath’s group’s invention called Isotypes [5] featured some signs that almost a century later are hard to interpret, like a small triangular shape representing sugar, based on a familiar commercial pyramidal paper packaging of individual sugar portions in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century.

Another design challenge for m-LoCoS is that the mobile phone UI itself should utilize LoCoS (optionally, like language switching). For the user in developing countries, it might be the case that telecom manufacturers and service providers might not have localized, or localized well, the UI to the specific users’ preferred language. M-LoCoS would enable the user to comfortably rely on a language for the controls and for help. For users in more developed countries, the “cool” factor or the interest in LoCoS would make an m-LoCoS UI desirable.

Not only must the repertoire of the current LoCoS signs be extended, but the existing signs must be revised to update them, as mentioned earlier in relation to Isotype. Despite Ota’s best efforts, some of the signs are culturally or religiously biased. Of course, it is difficult to make signs that are clear to everyone in the world and are pleasing to everyone. What is needed is a practical compromise that achieves tested success with the cultures of the target users. Examples of current challenges are shown in Figure 4. The current LoCoS sign for “restaurant” might often be mistaken for a “bar” because of the wine glass sign inside of the building sign. The cross as a sign for “religion” might not be understood correctly, thought appropriate, or even be welcome in Muslim countries such as Indonesia.

[image here] Figure 4: LoCoS signs for Priest and Restaurant

Another challenge would be to enable and encourage users to try LoCoS. Target users must be convinced to try to learn the visible language in one day. Non-English speakers might need to accommodate themselves to the English subject-verb-object structure. In contrast, in Japanese, the verb comes last, as it does in German dependent phrases. Despite Ota’s best efforts, some expressions can be ambiguous. Therefore, there seems to be a need for dictionary support, preferably on the mobile device itself. Users should be able to ask, “what is the LoCoS sign for the X, if any?” or “what does this LoCoS sign mean?”

Classifying, Selecting, and Entering Signs
There are several issues related to how users can enter m-LoCoS signs quickly and reliably. Users may not know for sure what the signs look like. What the user has in mind might not be in the vocabulary yet, or might not ever become a convention. One proposed solution is to select a sign from a list (menu), the technique used in millions of Japanese mobile phones.

To navigate among a screen-full of signs to a desired one, numerical keys can be used for eight-direction movement from a central position at the 5-key, which also acts as a Select key. For cases in which signs do not fit onto one screen (i.e., more than 36 signs), the 0-key might be used to scroll upward or downward with one or two taps. There are challenges with strict hierarchical navigation. It seems very difficult to make intuitive the taxonomy of all concepts in a language. Users may have to learn which concept is in which category. Shortcuts may help for frequently-used signs.

In addition, there are different (complementary) taxonomies. Form taxonomies could group signs that look similar (e.g., those containing a circle). Properties taxonomies could group signs that are concrete vs. abstract, artificial vs. natural, micro-scaled vs. macro-scaled, etc. Schemas (domains in the current prototype) would group “apple” and “frying pan” in the same domain because both are in the “food/eating” schema.