The semiotics of configurations for the immanent design of interactive computational systems

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Abstract

In this paper the authors propose a novel semiotic approach to the design of interactive systems and computational systems, grounded in the most recent contributions within the debate around semiotic theory and analysis. This approach, that is here called Semiotics of Configurations (SoC), is proposed for its analytic power in describing material artifacts and settings with a purposely a-conceptualistic stance. The resulting analysis informs a kind of design that is aimed at reproducing and supporting the programs of action detected in the use of artifacts, as this use is “abducted” from the physical and material form of the artifacts themselves and from the observation of how content is transformed within and across them. This approach to design, called immanent design, has inspired a platform for the user-driven development and use of electronic documents and forms in cooperative and organizational domains. The framework is illustrated with a case drawn from a study performed in the domain of hospital work.

Section snippets

Motivations and background

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of computational artifacts with respect to those that are based on the theoretical analysis of work settings and on the conceptual modeling of the technologies that can support work: we call our approach immanent design and propose it along with a semiotic approach to the analysis of socio-technical settings that is new with respect to the design of interactive systems.

In our design-oriented proposal immanence1

Semiotics beyond the sign

The adoption of semiotic approaches in computing and for the design of interactive computational systems has been characterized by an understanding and use of semiotics intended mainly as the study of signs [6], [48], [107]. Such a study has been usually interpreted through Peircian categories [48], [107], [20] – “representation” (representamen, in original Peircian terms), “object” and “interpretation” (interpretant, in original Peircian terms), just to mention the most frequently recurring

Using the semiotics of configurations to analyze artifacts

The SoC – though concerned with meanings and signification – does not account for the way in which users actually understand, interpret or use an artifact, for instance, a document form. The SoC is, indeed, mainly interested in accounting for what the relations are that set the base for an understanding, an interpretation or a use – i.e., their “conditions of possibility” [63]. Within a design oriented perspective, accounting for such “conditions” is key in order to preserve them in view of a

Introduction to the analysis

In this section we want to show how the perspective introduced before and the map that summarizes it can be used in order to carry out an analysis of actual artifacts and practices, which can inspire and inform the digitization of the related configurations and transformation.

Thus, the analysis we are going to propose has two aims. On one hand, it allows us to illustrate our method, as well as to provide a ground for many of our epistemological claims that up to now have remained too abstract.

Immanent design

The semiotics of configurations is proposed as the analytic lens for a kind of design that we have called immanent design, mainly for its purposeful focus on the material artifacts that are used in a cooperative setting, as a unique source of indication for the design of their digital counterparts and the underlying information system.

The relationship between the semiotics of configurations and immanent design is tight and strong. Both share important points:

  • •

    a relational epistemology;

  • •

    a theory

THe AdHOc platform: from analysis to (re)design

AdHoc is a digital platform for the creation and management of electronic documents that we developed to assist the immanent designer – and the end users themselves – in translating a SOC-compliant analysis into computational data structures and behaviors. In so doing, AdHoc is also our proof-of-concept, that is a prototype that proves the feasibility of this translation and that allows for the construction of new information systems. To this aim, AdHoc implements natively the main concepts of

Epilogue

“A man clambers onto the streetcar after having bought the daily paper and tucking it under arm. Half an hour later he gets off, the same newspaper under the same arm. Only now it's not the same newspaper. Now it's a pile of printed sheets which the man drops on bench in the plaza. It hardly stays alone a minute on the bench, the pile of printed sheets is converted into a newspaper again when a young boy sees it, reads it, and leaves it converted into a pile of printed sheets. It sits alone on

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