Operative communication: project Cybersyn and the intersection of information design, interface design, and interaction design

Abstract This article examines the connecting lines between Chilean Project Cybersyn’s interface design , German Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm and its cybernetically inspired approaches towards information later developments in interaction emerging field of Human–Computer Interaction USA. In particular, it first how early works designers Tomàs Maldonado Gui Bonsiepe on operative communication that is, language-independent (and thus internationalizable) pictogram systems visual grammars for computational systems, were intertwined with attempts to ground industrial a scientific methodology, address an era computing machines, develop concept as heuristic renovated thinking. It thereby also reconstructs further historical vanishing lines—e.g. pictorial grammar Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE—of development ‘ulm model’ design. Second explores apprehension first-order cybernetics West Germany—e.g. represented by hfg ulm staff like Max Bense or Abraham Moles, merged second-order ideas, Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model . And third asks about conceptual turn regarding understanding which resulted focus communicative interaction, e.g. Fernando Flores Terry Winograd HCI, Team Syntegrity approach. As effect, text will explore specific international network cybernetic thinking Latin America, Europe, North America emerged around Cybersyn, was occupied questions democratization design, intelligence amplification.