Semiotic Foundations of HCI and UX Design - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 20

FIGURE 2.2 A Google Earth screenshot depicting the historical center of Prague in a very
realistic way. Map data 2014 GEODIS Brno, SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy,

NGA, GEBCO. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used
with permission.

c 2008 Google, c

sleep, we have to choose from UI language components that are in conflict with our
intent. Even when something does not work as expected, we can gather interesting
data out of it. When we interpret a connection between a UI sign and a proposed
function, this mental connection is what forms our image of the system. “Systems
work because they don't work. Non-functionality remains essential for functionality”
(Galloway, 2008, p. 931). Similar oppositions build the interaction space as:

... the “choices” operating systems offer limit the visible and the invisible, the imagin-
able and the unimaginable. You are not, however, aware of software's constant constric-
tion and interpellation (also known as its “user-friendliness”), unless you find yourself
frustrated with its defaults (

...

).

(Chun, 2004, p. 43)

The action-orientation of ideology also works when the medialization (i.e., how
the content is presented to the user) is not credible. In such a case, however, the
medialization works the other way around: it influences our intent according to what
can be medialized. However, for a UI to be effective, it should be both credible
and familiar: “Designing for familiarity is crucial when trying to persuade people to
behave in unfamiliar ways” (Wai, 2007, p. 99).
The user actuates the computer (or apparatus) to use it together with their technical
imagination to create something but, paradoxically, one of the computer functions is
the user's intent (Flusser, 2001, p. 24). This is so because the apparatus is predisposed
only for some type of code and program cycles. As Bogost (2007) says: “Software
establishes rules of execution, tasks and actions that can and cannot be performed”