In terms of learnability, symbols are more difficult to learn because they are arbitrary - they have to be rote memorized. Icons, on the other end of the continuum, are more intuitive because they visually resemble the referent. The problem in using icons to represent language is that thousands of icons are necessary to cover all possible words in a given language. Besides that, abstract concepts and grammar are not always easy to represent iconically. An indexical system, however, like uniskript, combines the easiness of a pictorial system with the economy of an alphabetic system. This versatility explains why people learn uniskript so much faster than Roman letters, on one end, or Chinese characters, on the other.
In the next sections, I will shortly describe how uniskript alphabets are generated and discuss their applications in the area of education, literacy, phonics and second language learning.
Featural-visual Indexicality
Contrary to the spontaneous evolvement of most traditional alphabets, uniskript alphabets are generated through the meticulous work of a trained developer using a phonological matrix called
4-Questions Technique.\cite{suzuki}link Even though the principles are universal, uniskript alphabets are language specific. Each relevant phonological feature/gesture, of any given phoneme in the language, receives a bidimensional shape. Figures
\ref{653967} and
\ref{601405} illustrate the shapes suggested in the technique. The matrix prompts the developer with a set of questions and a number of alternative answers for each one of the features.