David Oswald, Germany.

Semiotic aspects of interface design for mobile and multi-touch interaction

D.-Oswald
David Oswald, Germany.

Many multi-touch apps on smartphones and tablet-PCs employ highly iconic representations of real life artefacts. Since the 1980s, real life metaphors have been believed to facilitate learning and using of digital products by transferring knowledge from the real world to the virtual world. However, digital native users today transfer knowledge of how to interpret interface signs mainly from their experience with other digital interfaces – and hardly from analogue devices. Hence, usability aspects cannot sufficiently explain the extremely high iconicity of multi-touch apps today.

Semiotic theory has been applied to describe human-computer-interaction and especially graphical user interfaces. However, previous approaches often were based on simplified concepts of the sign-object-relations found in index, icon, and symbol, and based on a sign concept that neglects the user’s process of inference and focuses on the sign-carrier only.

In this talk the semiotic process of sense-making and the distinct principles of inference of digital naïve and digital native users will be discussed. As a result, the communicative function of high iconicity in interfaces will be deduced and a trend towards a changing level of iconicity in future interfaces will be suggested.

http://www.david-oswald.de/