User interface design is still more of an art than a science. Interface design and redesign is mostly based on empirical studies or prototypes but there is still surprisingly little theoretical or engineering understanding of how to go about the design process and produce good designs the first time around. We present a semiotic analysis that explains features of some user interface redesigns t...

Semiotic Engineering is a Human Computer Interaction theory which perceives software as a communication between its designers and its users. We present here how an inspection method from that theory – the Semiotic Inspection Method has been used in the context of action games to evaluate their accessibility. In particular, we present a case study in which we investigated how sound and music wer...

This paper examines the interaction between Semiotic choices and the presentation and solution of a family of contemporary mathematical problems centred around the so-called 'stable marriage problem'. I investigate how a socially restrictive choice of signs impacts mathematical production both in terms of problem formation and of solutions. I further note how the choice of gendered language end...

The challenge for our panel was to address the opportunities and challenges of synthetic task environments for basic research on human performance in sociotechnical systems. In doing this, the classical three-body problem from physics is used as a metaphor to illustrate the contrast between dyadic and triadic semiotic models of cognitive systems. In the context of this metaphor, synthetic task ...

This paper explores the semiotic status of algebraic variables. To do that we build on a structuralist and post-structuralist train of thought going from Mauss and Lévi-Strauss to Baudrillard and Derrida. We import these authors’ semiotic thinking from the register of indigenous concepts (such as mana), and apply it to the register of algebra via a concrete case study of generating functions. T...

The quality of communication processes in networked organizations is difficult to evaluate and improve, because of the many parties involved in meaning construction and responsibility assignment. This paper presents an outline of a communications quality model grounded in semiotics that can be used to construct a quality management system. Key elements of any such system are quality perspective...

This paper deals with the emergence of aggressive deceptive behaviors in animal cognition. The adopted framework is an abductive/semiotic one. The first section frames animal cognition as more than “merely” instinctual, making room for the possibility of some kind of mental representations in nonhuman cognition. The second section proposes a case of insect communication where it is possible to ...

In this paper, we inspect new possible methods of Web surveillance combining web mining with sociolinguistic and semiotic related knowledge of human discourse. We first give an overview of telecommunication surveillance methods and systems, with focus on the Internet, and we describe the legal issues involved in Web or Internet communications investigations. We put the emphasis on identity disc...

Content-based indexing and retrieval of images and video requires a proper semantic description for image content. This paper discusses the mapping of high-level, application-specific, features to the visual primitives that are accessible through image processing techniques. A major difficulty is that there are currently no established methodologies for describing the contents of an image in te...

In our thinking and acting, natural language plays a central part. This language defines a structure even before we form something, and it can be regarded as the architecture of design. To be able to grasp the expression of these structures in HCI, we chose the perspective of linguistics and semiotics. The semiotics perspective in the context of HCI is increasingly popular in presenting a diffe...