Introduction - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 3

(MerriamWebster, 2013b). Although different systems and entities, such as humans
and computers, interpret data differently, they are able to share certain logical struc-
tures of objects and processes. Thanks to this unifying principle, our natural language
can create various programming languages, which strictly follow a set of logical
rules, allowing them to be readily interpreted and executed by the computer. The
execution of commands given to the computer is analogous to our utterance of com-
mands, as is the case of speech acts. Speech acts were coined by Austin (1962)
for utterances performing actions in the world (e.g., when promising or ordering
something).
Thought has therefore a strong relation with logic. “The thought is the signif-
icant proposition” (Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 38), that is, a proposition with a sense.
Wittgenstein suggests language is “[t]he totality of propositions” (Ibid.). What are
the aspects of language we shall work with? According to Searle, language possesses
the following three aspects: qualitativeness, subjectivity, and unity. Qualitativeness
is a “character of conscious thoughts, or qualia” (Searle, 2002, p. 40). Subjectivity is
a “first-person ontology of subjective conscious states, because they exist only when
they are experienced by some human or animal agent” (Ibid., p. 41). For unity, “all
conscious experiences at any given point in an agent's life come as part of one unified
conscious field [ ] A conscious state is by definition unified, and the unity will

follow from the subjectivity and qualitativeness” (Ibid.). Natural language is charac-
terized by discreteness, compositionality, and generativity (Searle, 2009, pp. 63-64).
A well-defined UI language should also have these features, in order to work properly.
For the linguistic and semiotic perspectives of HCI/UX design see Part I, “Semiotics
of Interaction.”
Thought thus arranges facts as pictures in the processing of reasoning. This means
the thought connects within itself a logical system of language together with its
depiction, or model, because “[t]he picture is a model of reality” (Wittgenstein, 1922,
p. 28). Thought as a reasoning and logical process provides thus a link between
systems that are mutually untranslatable, but which interact with one another. We
can notice the link in the above example with natural language and the programming
language, which stands behind the UI. Thought connects also the textual and pictorial
expression with design. The UI “is always an effect. It is always a process or a
translation” between significant expressions (Galloway, 2008, p. 939). The UI stands
on a system of ideas and beliefs, an HCI ideology.
Thought joins ideology with action. The nexus of both of them finds its place in
the UI. The UI as an artifact has a strong analogy with architecture, as it is presented
by Somol and Whiting (2002). According to them, architecture can be regarded as an
index, or “mediator [which combines] materialism with signification” (Ibid., p. 74).
“Architecture is both substance and act. The sign is a record of an intervention—an
event and an act [

...

]” (Ibid.). The UI as a mediator presupposes a user to work
with it, thus enacting the ideology behind it. In the context of theater this is known
as a parallax. “[P]arallax is the theatrical effect of a peripatetic view of an object.
It takes into account how the context and the viewer 'complete' the work of art”
(Ibid., p. 76). While parallax is purely optical, the Doppler effect is more general.
“[The Doppler effect is] an atmospheric interaction. It foregrounds the belief that
both the subject and the object carry and exchange information and energy. In short,
a user might be more attuned to certain aspects of a building than others” (Ibid.). And

...