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So far we described a situation in which the user interacts (only) with the computer.
How could this perspective change, when we start to consider also the designer of the
UI? From the semiotic perspective it is important, that the user-computer interaction
is a form of communication with the designer through the UI. The designer sends a
“one-shot message” (de Souza, 2005, p. 84) through the UI to the user stating his or
her intention and his or her understanding of the user's needs and wishes. The user
then must decode this message in order to use the UI properly.
Because the designer is not present at the time of interaction, the UI plays the role
of the “designer's deputy” (de Souza, 2005, p. 90). In the UI there are different texts
and speech acts that the designer actually puts in and tells the user what to do, for
example, in the form of documentation, help, tips, splash screens, intros, etc., which
comes with the UI. The designer's deputy must be able to communicate the designer's
intention (present in the one-shot message) of how the UI is to be used. In this case
the metacommunication takes the form of narration that augments what the screens
say to the user by themselves. These narrative parts can be structured as speech acts
(Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and should follow the related characteristics (see Grice's
maxims, 1975). As Winograd (1987-88) points out, “[s]peech acts are not unrelated
events but participate in larger conversation structures [
]. An important example
is the simple 'conversation for action,' in which one party (A) makes a request to
another (B). The request is interpreted by each party as having certain conditions of
satisfaction, which characterize a future course of actions by B” (Ibid., pp. 7-8). “The
emphasis here is on language as an activity, not as the transmission of information
or as the expression of thought” (Ibid., p. 10). Speech acts are a suitable tool for us,
because they can take different forms. As Searle suggests, even just an action can be a
speech act (Searle, 2009, p. 89). By using speech acts, we have the capacity to create
a reality just by representing it. The conversation for action perspective is related to
narration in Section 3.1.3, “Narration,” and its implications for images are discussed
in Section 2.4, “UI languages.”
In this chapter we presented our main perspective that the designer generally
communicates to the user through the UI at the moment of execution of the interaction.
During the design process there is a two-way communication with the user, however,
when the designer gathers facts and forms intuitions about the user's needs or wants.
This notion is similar to the author and reader model, where the author conducts the
reader through the text (Eco, 1979), and mental models of user, designer, and the
system image (Norman, 2002). In the following chapter we shall discuss what forms
this communication can acquire.
...
2.3 IDEOLOGY, PERSUASION
The UI of interactive systems is the meeting point of people with interactive com-
munication technology (ICT). As a human product, it forms a part of culture that
determines us, often without our full awareness. The UI is constructed according to a
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