1. Chapter 3 Start Semiotic Engineering Tenets of Semiotic Engineering
basis for theory
to evaluate,
to design

2. Ch. 3 Semiotic Engineering
Introduction:
Designers perform interaction to critique interfaces as a regular part of their research and practice,
But the field of HCI lacks a proper discipline of interaction criticism.
By interaction criticism we mean rigorous, evidence- based interpretive analysis that explicates relationships among elements of an interface and the meanings, affects, moods, and intuitions they produce in the people that interact with them; the immediate goal of this analysis is the generation of innovative design insights.
We summarize existing work offering promising directions in interaction criticism to build a case for a proper discipline. We then propose a framework for the discipline, relating each of its parts to recent HCI research

3. Standard process of HCI
Standard process of how to practice interaction design:
problem definition,
user study,
sketching through prototype design, and
evaluation

4. This process is refined to address:
aspects of interaction design, in particular usability, performance, and user satisfaction. Increasingly, we are hearing calls for innovation in more subjective areas, such as
Aesthetics
affective computing
experience design
intimate and embodied interaction

5. Improvement needed
interaction design needs to improve its awareness of
“the symbolic level of mood and meaning, of sociability and civility”;
we need
“a language true to the medium of computation, networks, and telecommunications.”

6. Problem = the lack of an expressive language of interaction design Needs:
rigorous interpretive analysis that explicates how elements of the interface, through their relationships to each other, produce certain meanings, affects, moods, and intuitions in the people that interact with them.
We say “rigorous” to stress that interaction criticism, like the best film and literary criticism, transcends anything-goes subjectivism and offers instead systematic, evidence-based analyses of subjective phenomena.
The purpose of such an analysis is to generate actionable insights for interaction design.

7. Framework as the study of interfaces
Stylistic references
Standards and conformance to tradition
Materiality and remediation
Genre
Functional versus cultural dimensions of an
interface
Representational techniques
Challenges to user expectations
Capacity for unanticipated use

8. goal of becoming a thoughtful, reflective designer
A sensibility regarding the qualities of designs and design processes
A developed language, which appears to mean a technical analytic vocabulary
Reflective thinking, which emphasizes the interpreting subject’s awareness of her- or himself in the development of one’s own thoughts
Retrospective reflection, which explores the “arguments and ideas that could explain a design”

9. Goal from this class To build a good language for the interface which:
Is futuristic
Is manipulated by user in novice then expert manner
Is dynamically representative of the concept
Is progressively learned
Has elements known to user and aspect never seen/experienced by user and the unknown aspects are “bridge” intuitive. (“bridge” = via user experimentation)

10. Good languages have levels
Conceptual Level Goal
Semantic Level Meaning
Syntactical Level Grammar
Lexical Level Tokens, Alphabet

11. Interaction Diagogues
Person
System
Goal: Save the file
Subgoal: find the “saving functionality”
Action token: Mouse travel to disc image on left upper corner

12. Next cycle of human - system
Input Received: The disc image appears selected and “Save (Ctrl + S)” is given in help box
Perception: I’m on the save functionality.
Subgoal: Start the save function
Desired token: Select the disc image
Action token: Press the left mouse button

13. Then the next cycle is: Input Received: Dialogue Box appears
Perception: This is the save dialogue
Next sub-goal: Name the file with unique description name
Processing: the default name is not Document 1 but the first line of the file and this is okay… but the location of the file is not in the correct folder
New sub-goal: get the file into folder SWE 4783 Action: select the scroll bar, press left mouse button, and travel down till I see the SWE 4783 folder.

14. Give the left side data:
Input Received:
Perception:
Next Sub-goal:
Action:
Action token:

15. Foley and Van Dam Four Levels of Cognition (thinking)
Conceptual level:
User's mental model of the interactive system
Semantic level:
Describes the meanings conveyed by the user's command input and by the computer's output display
Syntactic level:
Defines how the units (words) that convey semantics are assembled into a complete sentence that instructs the computer to perform a certain task
Lexical level:
Deals with device dependencies and with the precise mechanisms by which a user specifies the syntax

16. Command Language Grammar from Moran
Moran (1981) describes Command Language Grammar (CLG) as having three components and six levels (see below).

17. Moran’s Levels
Task level: The user comes to the system with a set of tasks that he wants to accomplish. The purpose of the Task level is to analyze the user’s needs, and to structure his task domain in a way that is amenable to an interactive system. The output of this level is a structure of specific tasks that the user will set for himself with the aid of the system.
Semantic level: A system is built around a set of objects and manipulations of those objects. To the system these are data structures and procedures; to the user they are conceptual entities and conceptual operations on these entities. The Semantic level lays out these entities and operations. They are intended to be useful for accomplishing the user’s tasks, since they represent the systems functional capability. Thus, the Semantic level also specifies methods for accomplishing the tasks in terms of these conceptual entities and operations.
Syntactic level: The conceptual model of a system is embedded in a language structure, the command language, for users to communicate with the system. All command languages are built out of a few syntactic elements; commands, arguments, contexts and state variables. The Syntactic level lays out these elements. The “meaning” of each command of the system is defined in terms of operations at the Semantic level, and the methods at the Semantic level are recorded in terms of Syntactic level commands.
Interactional level: The dialogue conventions for the user-system interaction must ultimately be resolved as a sequence of physical actions- key presses and other primitive device manipulations by the user and display actions by the system. The Interaction level specifies the physical actions associated with each of the Syntactic level elements, as well as the rules governing the dialogue

18. HCI = twofold computer-mediated metacommunication
About aspect of communication itself
How it gives users a key (hint) for interpreting
How their senders mean
Nonverbal cues
Presence
affordance
One-shot message – complete content encoded

19. Three fundamental consequences
Designer involved at interaction time
Qualitative dimensions
Process of encoding the message as a computing system captures and freezes only part
Will evolve overtime
Computationally encoded portion is the One-shot metacommunication message to users.

20. Semiotic Engineering Design Space
Designer’s messageSystem’s Sign
user’s role

21. Designing Signs triggers:
What aspects of the sender?
What aspects of the receiver?
Context of communication?
Communication code?
Channel?
Message?
See page 87-88