Gestures
Next to the smiley face icon, the visual representation of the thumbs up gesture may be the most widely used visual symbol, thanks to Facebook's like function. This non-verbal universal gesture is used as a status indicator that expresses one's positive or negative emotional response to something. The human ability to encode such social connotation in a physical gesture, and then abstract it in a graphic symbol, makes possible their use as icons in user interfaces.
From seeing to making meaning
What complicates the design of visual information is that responses to visual cues, while built into the visual-processing function of our brain, do not always produce the same reaction in all viewers.
The image of a white dove on a balcony banister, is an image with sufficient cultural content to elicit some anticipated responses related to a sense of beauty, nature, peace, freedom, and the like. Yet in addition to such generalized responses, the viewer's individual context can trigger completely...
