Chord symbols above music can confuse beginners by their orientation - that is not the way you look at the neck of guitar. I have come across people reading them upside down, or even mistaking the frets for the strings. However, the idea of putting blobs on a grid to show fretted positions is easily understood.
Tabulature is something I find particularly complex in appearance when comparatively simple playing is accurately transcribed. Eventually, tab readers learn to recognise patterns and but it takes just as long to do so as learning to read regular music. I often find that a printed 3 can look like a 5 or an 8 (vice-versa etc) and that tab is not specially good at explaining movement - the idea, for example, of sliding an entire shape up a couple of frets. I can demonstrate something and teach it in a fraction of the time it takes anyone to grasp the same concept through tab.
Here is an example of a diagram format I have devised. It represents a two-beat 'intro' before hitting a G chord as the first beat of a bar beginning a tune in G. I will not explain it any further, as I would like to know if it is understood without detailed description. The intention is a diagram which can teach a simple lick or 'move' without words and without needing a taped accompaniment to being to even grasp the feel of it (a fair amount of tab I have seen is almost useless unless you can first hear the piece played).
This diagram would however be accompanied by instructions that on the final chord, all six strings can be played - or if not, further dots would be placed for open strings. As hollow dots are used for open strings in regular chord diagrams this is something I need to resolve. There are various possibilities including using colour, but for the purposes of this test I'm keeping to using grey tints.
Please let me know if you can read this - and yes, it's a neat intro lick and you can play those first two notes either as two crochets or two semibreves for a two-beat or full 4/4 bar intro. Opinions to david@maxwellplace.demon.co.uk