Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time

Semiotic engineering is a semiotic theory of human-computer interaction, where interactive computer systems are viewed as one-shot messages sent from designers to users. Through the system's interface, in many direct and indirect ways, designers are telling the users how they can, should, or must interact with the system in order to achieve a particular range of goals anticipated at design time. Designers are thus active interlocutors at human-computer interaction time. Their interactive discourse is delivered implicitly and/or explicitly by the system, which constitutes the designer's deputy. The importance of bringing designers and users together at interaction time springs from the intellectual nature of software artifacts. They are the result of human reasoning, choice and decision, rather than the direct effect of universal or natural laws. An adequate understanding of interactive artifacts depends on apprehending and comprehending the human intellect in action. Hence, in addition to producing interactive artifacts, designers must also introduce them appropriately, as is the case of other intellectual products. In this paper, we show how semiotic engineering can provide substantial theoretic support for viewing and exploring design possibilities brought about by this shift in perspective. We also discuss ontological and epistemological aspects of the theory, and conclude that it can bridge some of the gaps between other fragmented HCI theories and approaches.