Create new visual design language for representing flows
Forking this off from valueflows#502 (closed) as there will likely be a lot of chatter in this and they are two separate tasks.
Currently we're heavily considering string diagrams, like this one:
More reading on this style of diagram can be found at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.05316.pdf
There have been quite a few different representations for flows created over the years, such as:
- http://valueflows.pythonanywhere.com/vocab/egg2worm-flow/ and various other examples on http://valueflows.pythonanywhere.com/
- The diagrams on http://locecon.org/
- Various places on http://valueflo.ws/
It would be ideal to get to a shared visual design language for these types of diagrams (colour palette, shape & line styles as well as 'overall style') so that we are all modeling in a consistent way. We could just follow the style of the old NRP diagrams, but I think there's an opportunity here to do something more considered & have a re-think with some designer input. Plus, computer-generated diagrams similar to these will likely become part of various interfaces in future.
Other relevant comments on this topic to date: