Semiotic Foundations of HCI and UX Design - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 17

FIGURE 2.1 Soviet poster dedicated to the 5th anniversary of the October Revolution and
IV Congress of the Communist International. The image contains all of the four ideology
components defined by Mullins, 1972. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:CominternIV.jpg , cit. 2009-05-02.

“Ideology, then, which begins historically as an iconoclastic 'science of ideas'
designed to overturn 'idols of the mind,' winds up being characterized as itself a new
form of idolatry—ideolatry” (Ibid.). Thus, it is important to analyze the visual plane,
(together with metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction) 1 of UIs, where
HCI ideologies take the most recognizable shape (for a visual example of ideology
components, see Figure 2.1).
Currently, in the context of ICT, ideology comes to us from a rather unexpected
direction. As Galloway (2008) points out, citing Althusser, ideology that was, “tradi-
tionally defined as an 'imaginary relationship to real conditions' (Althusser)” (Ibid.,
p. 953) has been superseded by simulation. He understands simulation as an “imagi-
nary relationship to ideological conditions.” In short, “ideology gets modeled in soft-
ware” (Ibid.). Therefore, software serves as a prime example of current ideologies
acting on us according to all the four criteria.

2.3.1 C OGNITIVE POWER

Software models ideology and makes ideology visible through the way software
works. This reflects the cognitive power of ideology by relating to the underlying
hardware in a specific way:

1 cf. Marcus, A. “Integrated information systems: A professional field for information designers.” Infor-
mation Design Journal 17:1, 4-21, 2009.