Human-computer interaction viewed as pseudo-communication

Semiotics is considered fundamental to an understanding of human±computer interaction, and of all computer artifacts. Informatics should therefore be viewed as technical semiotics (or semiotics engineering). In particular, interaction between human and computer is characterized by features of communication, a sort of communication, however, that lacks decisive communicative features. It must be identi®ed as a process of pseudo-communication. Interaction is viewed as the coupling of two autonomous processes: a sign process (carried out by the human user) and a signal process (carried out by the computer). Software appears as a semiotic entity in a duplicate way: calculated and calculating, i.e. both result and agent of calculations. This dialectics characterizes the class of signs on the computer medium. Problems of software design (functionality and usability design) are speci®c problems of the coupling of sign and signal processes. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.