Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza

A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities

Social interactions in online communities are varied and often complex, as are the communities themselves. The characteristics of the people, the range of purposes they pursue, the type of governance policies they develop, and the design of the software supporting a community, vary from community to community. These characteristics determine a community’s sociability. Thus, the availability of powerful analytic tools to help designers understand existing technology-supported social activity online can broaden the spectrum of design knowledge and promote new insights for designing computer applications of this sort. In this paper, we present one such analytic tool—a theoretically-based online community framework (OCF). In order to demonstrate the efficacy of the framework we elaborate on its communication constituent using semiotic theory to help us. This constituent is particularly important in the OCF because it addresses computer-mediated communication between community members, and also communication from interactive software designers to users via the software they design. This latter kind of communication can shape the community’s experience to a considerable extent, as our analysis shows. The paper ends with an agenda for future research. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The semiotic engineering of user interface languages

Abstract Semiotic approaches to design have recently shown that systems are messages sent from designers so users. In this paper we examine the nature of such messages and show that systems are messages that can send and receive other messages—they are metacommunication artefacts that should be engineered according to explicit semiotic principles. User interface languages are the primary expressive resource for such complex communication environments. Existing cognitively-based research has provided results which set the target interface designers should hit, but little is said about how to make successful decisions during the process of design itself. In an attempt to give theoretical support to the elaboration of user interface languages, we explore Ecos Theory of Sign Production (U. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976) and build a semiotic framework within which many design issues can be explained and predicted.

Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces

U User interfaces can be viewed as one-shot, higher-order messages sent from designers to users. The content of such messages is a designers conception of who the users are, what their needs and expectations are, and, more important, how the designer has chosen to meet these requirements through an interactive artifact. The form of the messages is an interactive language (i.e., a series of organized dialog patterns determining how and which other lower-order messages can be exchanged between users and systems. From this perspective, user interface design is a semiotic engineering task [1] whose target is to convey the specific principles of communication that are embedded in any software arti-fact. Thus, designers should be assisted in achieving this goal and in evaluating how well they do it in different situations.

The semiotic inspection method

This paper describes semiotic inspection, a semiotic engineering evaluation method. It briefly identifies the essence of theory-based evaluation methods in HCI. Then it provides a detailed description and illustration of this method, which is based on a semiotic theory of HCI. It discusses its theoretical stance in semiotic engineering compared to the communicability evaluation method, as well as the perceived advantages and disadvantages of semiotic inspection. Finally, it points at the next steps in the semiotic inspection research agenda.

Can inspection methods generate valid new knowledge in HCI? The case of semiotic inspection

HCI evaluation methods tend to be proposed and used to verify the interactive qualities of specific systems and design strategies. A discussion about the scientific merits of such methods to advance knowledge in HCI as a field is very rare, although much needed. This paper shows that, under certain conditions, inspection methods can be safely used in scientific research in HCI and extend their advantages beyond the territory of professional practice. Taking the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM) as an example, we argue that its interpretive results are objective, can be validated, and produce scientific knowledge comparable to that generated by more widely accepted methods.

A diagrammatic tool for representing user interaction in UML

The UML suggests the employment of use cases for capturing the requirements and for specifying the interaction between the users and the system being modeled. Use cases are easily understood by users since they are essentially textual descriptions, but lack the precision and the conciseness accomplished by the other diagrammatic tools of UML. Besides, there is no systematic method that helps the designer to obtain such UML diagrams from a set of use cases. In this paper we present a diagrammatic tool to represent the users/system interaction called User Interaction Diagram (UID). UIDs have proven to be a valuable tool to gather requirements since they describe the exchange of information between the system and the user in a high level of abstraction, without considering specific user interface aspects and design details as in other UML diagrams. We show how UIDs can be incorporated into the requirements and analysis workflows of the Unified Process for software development.

Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time

Abstract Semiotic engineering is a semiotic theory of human–computer interaction, where interactive computer systems are viewed as one-shot messages sent from designers to users. Through the systems interface, in many direct and indirect ways, designers are telling the users how they can, should, or must interact with the system in order to achieve a particular range of goals anticipated at design time. Designers are thus active interlocutors at human–computer interaction time. Their interactive discourse is delivered implicitly and/or explicitly by the system, which constitutes the designers deputy . The importance of bringing designers and users together at interaction time springs from the intellectual nature of software artifacts. They are the result of human reasoning, choice and decision, rather than the direct effect of universal or natural laws. An adequate understanding of interactive artifacts depends on apprehending and comprehending the human intellect in action. Hence, in addition to producing interactive artifacts, designers must also introduce them appropriately, as is the case of other intellectual products. In this paper, we show how semiotic engineering can provide substantial theoretic support for viewing and exploring design possibilities brought about by this shift in perspective. We also discuss ontological and epistemological aspects of the theory, and conclude that it can bridge some of the gaps between other fragmented HCI theories and approaches.

A semiotic engineering approach to user interface design

Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. By presenting some of the results we have reached with semiotic engineering over the last few years, we suggest that the main contributions of semiotic theory in supporting HCI design are: to provide designers with new perceptions on the process and product of HCI design; to bind together all the stages of software development and use, giving them a unique homogeneous treatment; and to pose innovative questions that extend the frontiers of HCI investigations.

A semiotic engineering approach to HCI

Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. In this paper we present the semiotic engineering approach to HCI and some of the results that have been reached at the Semiotic Engineering Research Group (SERG) at the Informatics Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).

A Semiotic Framing for End-User Development

One approach to designing usable and enjoyable computer applications is to say that designers need better methods and tools to understand users and their contexts, and to encode this understanding into closed computer systems. Another is to acknowledge that there will always be unattended user needs, and that the way to increase users’ satisfaction is to help them modify systems in order to meet constantly changing requirements. Different techniques are proposed in one approach usually without reference to the other. We present an overarching perspective of human–computer interaction where both meet, and provide a semiotic characterization of designers’ and users’ activities that clarifies the tradeoffs involved in designing and choosing techniques in either approach. Central to this characterization is the role of intentions in what users mean to say and do when using computers. Our characterization is in line with a broader concept of usability, in which systems must support users’ improvisation and creativity. 1. Meeting End-Users’ Expectations In spite of speedy technological evolution and voluminous knowledge generated by research and development in human–computer interaction (HCI), users of information technology (IT) products still have to live with a high dosage of frustration and confusion when trying to get systems to do what they want. Building usable and enjoyable systems remains a challenge for the IT industry, regardless of the excitement brought about by such things as miniature multi-function mobile devices, sophisticated virtual reality caves, or intelligent buildings and vehicles. The old challenge can be stated in very simple terms: how do we design technology that meets the users’ needs? Very large portions of contemporary work in HCI center around techniques and tools that can help designers enhance their understanding of users and use situations. Their aim is to minimize the mismatch between what users want to do with computer systems and how computer systems respond to their expectations. There is a variety of approaches for solving this problem, two of them lying at opposite ends. One seeks to increase a designer’s ability to capture finer distinctions in the users’ behavior and context, and to encode such improved distinctions into computer systems. The idea is to cover a maximum share of the users’ world and to prepare the system to react appropriately as situations evolve. The other approach seeks to empower users with the ability to tailor computer systems to their specific needs, by customizing the systems’ Henry Lieberman et al. (eds.), End User Development, 401–426.