By Dov Dori
WORDS FROM PICTURES
FOR DUAL-CHANNEL PROCESSING

Text and graphics are complementary modalities our brains process interchangeably. Conceptual modeling, recognized as a critical step in architecting and designing systems, is an intellectual activity that would greatly benefit from the concurrent utilization of the verbal and visual channels of human cognition. A conceptual-modeling framework that employs graphics and text would help alleviate cognitive loads. Object-Process Methodology (OPM) is a bimodal graphics/text conceptual-modeling framework catering to these needs. Here, I argue on behalf of the OPM holistic approach in addressing assumptions about the dual channel, as well as limited-channel capacity and active processing. To help make the case, using a running example of a car’s emergency braking system, I demonstrate bimodality and complexity management via hierarchical decomposition and animated simulation to address these cognitive needs. Meanwhile, work is under way to employ some of these ideas in a future version of the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) ( www.sysml.org).

Combining graphics
and text representations
of complex systems,
Object-Process Methodology
makes it easier to understand
technical ideas, whether or
not one is technically
oriented by nature or
training.