Semiotic Foundations of HCI and UX Design - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 18

In a formal sense computers understood as comprising software and hardware are ide-
ology machines. They fulfill almost every formal definition of ideology we have [ ... ].
Software, or perhaps more precisely operating systems, offer us an imaginary relation-
ship to our hardware: they do not represent transistors but rather desktops and recycling
bins. Software produces “users.”

(Chun, 2004, p. 43) 2

Software creates both a relation with hardware as well as with users. Hardware is
what the user encounters first, although the focus is then shifted to the software and the
UI as a whole. UI is regarded as an entrance into a simulated world, but UI also forms
a media layer between the “real” world and the user. “The doorway/window/threshold
definition is so prevalent today that interfaces are often taken to be synonymous with
media themselves” (Galloway, 2008, p. 936). An even more poignant definition relates
the UI more tightly to the effect it has on the interacting users:

The interface is this state of “being on the boundary.” It is that moment where one
significant material is understood as distinct from another significant material. In other
words, an interface is not a thing; an interface is always an effect. It is always a process
or a translation.

(Galloway, 2008, p. 939)

The UI works thus not only on a semiotic level by differentiating symbols, but also
on a psychological level when it creates relations and effects. For the UI to be effective
and enjoyable, it is important to work “as a 'mirror' depicting the user's self-image,
not only a 'window' looking into a world of content (

)” (Marcus, 1998, p. 53).
The differentiation work of the UI done between the user and users' self-image
leads us to think about the UI in the terms of an active self-organizing entity. This
notion is close to what Derrida (1993) called “difference.” Following Derrida's ar-
gumentation, the UI presents a different idea from the original one (or content) just
by the way it is mediated. Thus, different media can go only as far as their structure
permits. The medium of text can express other things than speech (e.g., Derrida's
example of difference vs. difference, both of which are read the same); the medium
of image can express other things than text, etc. The medium of the UI thus expresses
its content differently.
The primacy of text for Derrida is something we can also observe very well in
software. Software can go past the interacting subject, which is in contrast with the
UI, which is bound in the subject/object relation (Derrida, 1993) simply because it
requires a user. And because the action is done through the UI, the UI privileges the
content it presents. In this way, the UI not only tells us how to read a certain idea
but can also preselect for us which ideas we can possibly read. Winograd and Flores
state that: “Computers have an especially large scope, for they are machines that
work with language. By using them, we join a discourse set up in the limits made by
programmers” (Winograd and Flores, 1987, p. 178). 3

...

Each UI presupposes a certain

2 cf. Galloway, 2008, p. 953—“The computer is the ultimate ethical machine. It has no actual relation with
ideology in any proper sense of the term, only a virtual one.”
3 cf. Derrida, 1993.