1. Semiotics is the study of signs (not your normal street signs)
Semiotics is the study of signs (not your normal street signs). It’s a way of looking at the world based on the idea that everything we experience is actively constructed by us. That there is no information just sitting there, but that we make information by the way we interpret and read “signs”.
Thinking about semiotics is useful for those of us conducting design research because it takes us back to basics. It makes us stop, look, listen, deconstruct and reconnect everything that we see and experience while doing research.
Semiotics

2. Interaction Engineering
Building systems is a team effort.
The central role of the system is communication
in and out
Understanding the needs of the customer, the end user, and the developer is the mission.
Some design problems are best solved with a good understanding of the underlying engineering of communication.

3. Semiotics
the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication.

4. History of Semiotics
The importance of signs and significances has been recognised throughout much of history of philosophy, and also in psychology.
Plato and Aristotle both explored relationships between signs and the world, these theories have had a great impact throughout western philosophy, especially throughout scholastic philosophy.
More recently Umberto Eco, in his book semiotics and the philosophy of language, has argued that the work of most semiotic theories are implied in the work of most and all major thinkers throughout the world.

5. Structuralists Charles Sanders Peirce Ferdinand de Saussure
Linguist (French)
1857 –1913
Charles Sanders Peirce
Mathematician (American)
1839 –1914
Claude Levi-Strauss
Anthropologist (French)
1908 -
Brief History
Ferdinand Mongin de Sassure (old French guy- linguist)
Charles Sanders Pierce (old American guy – mathematician)
Claude Levi Strauss (still a very old French Anthropologist)
Mr Strauss was my first contact with the idea of semiotics and structuralism when I was studying anthropology at uni.
These guys were structuralists, which basically means they thought everything made by humans existed or was conceived within a web of other things.
Structuralists

6. Semiotics: The study of signs and meanings
Key figure in the study of language
Work inspired ideas of later writers in film theory, cultural studies and media studies
Important contribution – recognition of the nature of language as a relational system of signs
Ferdinand de Saussure
1857 – 1913 Swiss Linguist

7. Components of the sign signification signifier signified
A sign of a guinea pig
Sign - physical existence (marks on paper, sounds in air, pixels on screen etc.) – anything which is meaningful to someone
Signifier – sensory perception of sign (form)
Signified – concept/meaning evoked by the sign (content)

8. Signs, signifiers and signified
Sign - physical existence
Signifier – sensory perception of sign (form)
Signified – concept/meaning evoked by the sign (content)

9. Semiotics
The study of signs, representation (simulation/metaph or), codes, and emergent ideologies.
This provides a model of understanding of the meaning of a cultural artifact or event.

10. Study of signs
It covers indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor and symbolism. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, in which the structure and meaning of languages is studied. Semiotics is broken down into three different branches:
Semantics: This is relation between signs and what they refer to, their dentate, what they mean
Syntactic: relations between signs in formal structure
Pragmatics: relation between sign and their effects
Semiotics is know for having important anthropological dimensions, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication.

11. Signified Signifier So what is a sign?
Signs - in the semiotic sense - are comprised of two bits, the signified (which is the actual idea or concept being discussed, and this can be anything) and the signifier (the thing that points to the signified).

12. Signs
Signifier: any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, an image.
Signified: the concept that a signifier refers to.
Together, the signifier and signified make up the
Sign: the smallest unit of meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

13. Sign

14. gau
hund
Inu
canis
DOG
e.g This word DOG represents the idea of an animal the letters used are arbitrary but our shared cultural understanding means that most of us in the room know what is meant when we see those three letters.

15. Models for understanding language
Language is CONSTRUCTED by people to produce meanings within their culture
It is only when we name objects and events that they are given meaning and definition
The social contract of language means that we agree to use the same language as everyone else so they understand us.
We can however play with the language of our society through signs, codes and patterns as well as words.

16. Attendance for 8/16
I will assign A’s and B’s to each of you. Do the following in the next 5 minutes:
Person A – create directions to your favorite restaurant with only words.
Person B – create directions to fold a piece of paper into an paper airplane with only words.
Please meet another student and exchange directions. Separately look at the given directions and notice your:
Initial impression - What did you see? Representations? Unknown?
Communicate with the other student your impressions. Hand in the directions and the analysis with your names to the front of the classroom.