The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer
Interaction

The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer
Interaction

Ergonomics

“Semiotic” or “semiotics” are terms not frequently found in the HCI literature.
Search results can be taken as a rough indication of the relative scarcity of semiotic
approaches to HCI. In December 2003 a search for semiotic in the HCI Bibliography (see HCI Bibliography) returned 22 records, whereas a search for ethnographic
returned 104, one for ergonomic returned 344, and finally one for cognitive returned
1,729. Although these numbers cannot be taken as a precise measure, the difference
in scale speaks for itself. Semiotics is the study of signs, signification processes, and
how signs and signification take part in communication. It is neither a new discipline, nor one whose object of investigation is foreign to HCI. In its modern guise,
it has been established for approximately one century. But the debate about its
central themes of investigation—meaning assignment, meaning codification, and the
forms, ways, and effects of meaning in communication—dates back to the Greek
classics.

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza

The MIT Press

2005

English