This essay is considered an attempt to present how semiotic studies can be used as a perceptional aspect in reading architecture and urbanism. Appearance of each art is similar to creation of a “text” which transfers a set of customs, values and thought together with itself. Production of each “text” is based on its context, culture and intellectual bed of its origin society. Each text is an ...

Online help systems are typically used as a last resource in interactive breakdown situations. In this paper, we present a method for building online help based on design models according to a semiotic engineering approach. We show the benefits of having designers explicitly communicate their design vision to users, and we also point at the need to foster a new culture for online help. We show ...

Agile software development as well as other recent trends stresses the need for a radical rethinking of the software object likening its nature to the semiotic object. The MultiDimensional Separation of Concerns paradigm emerges as a result of the felt need for grasping the true nature of the software object. This brought a proliferation of approaches where the Babel effect is transparent. Henc...

semiotics: general definitions 1. Semiotics is concerned with meaning; how representation, in the broad sense (language, images, objects) generates meanings or the processes by which we comprehend or attribute meaning. For visual images, or visual and material culture more generally, semiotics is an inquiry that is wider than the study of symbolism and the use of semiotic analysis challenges co...

There are two models based on Semiotic Engineering aimed to assist designers in modeling the interface: Manas and MoLIC. This work shows the result of the application of these models in two collaborative systems and contrasts the results between models and within each model, assessing which aspects were represented by each model and in what level of abstraction, as well as the possibility of a ...

This paper aims to reflect on the role of Culture of Participation in fostering an Ethics of Design, as a means of true innovation in contemporary society. Participation often stands on commonalities, empathy and the desire to share our own beliefs and world views. The design of artifacts has as its first, though implicit purpose, to convey a message. Our economy relies even more on knowledge-i...

Learning objects are considered as complex signs, since they convey meaning through a physical support and are related to real or conceptual object. In addition, it is possible to define a sequence of learning objects that can be modeled as having a narrative structure the advantage of this proposal is that, from the structural theory of narrative, content and expression can be treated separate...

Object-oriented design is based on the argument that objects in a program act as a simulation of objects in the real world. This paper will provide a semiotic account of object-oriented design patterns, treating an object as a sign comprised of some part of the real world, its realisation in the program, and the programmers intent about the program design (that the object model the world). The ...

Semiotic Cognitive Information Processing (SCIP) is inspired by information systems theory and grounded in (natural/artificial) system-environment situations. SCIP systems’ knowledge-based natural language processing (NLP) of information makes it cognitive, their sign and symbol generation, manipulation, and understanding capabilities render it semiotic. Based upon structures whose representati...

Building on ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), this essay outlines a social and semiotic theory of four seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities that, while essential for understanding modern social processes, are often confused and conflated. Loosely speaking, agency is a causal capacity: say, the relatively flexible wielding of means towards ends. Subjectivity ...