Semiotic Foundations of HCI and UX Design - Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design - page 23

and possibly others. This agrees with Mullins' view, since the way the world works
refers to cognitive and evaluative power, people's place in it, and what they ought to
do then refers to action-orientation. Dilger states, that ease is gendered, which is to
be seen in the connotation of an “easy” to use computer system as feminine. Ease has
a different meaning in connection to work and leisure, during the former it has to be
supported by the system, during the latter a certain difficulty could be desirable, e.g.,
in chess. At work, moreover, a task may not seem worthwhile if it does not seem easy.
Pictures may furthermore seem easier to understand than text, which is supported by
various media, such as television or comics. The notion of speed is also connected to
anything which would be labeled as easy including learning. Finally, the gain of ease
is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, or health (Ibid.).
Some of the HCI ideologies may even have a more pronounced impact on the
user's behavior through the use of social cues and persuasion techniques. In the mobile
context this has been carried out by Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc., in a series of
mobile applications. The applications may lead the users to reduce their ecological
footprint (Marcus and Jean, 2009), reduce weight, improve dietary behavior (Marcus,
2011), manage wealth after retirement (Marcus, 2012a), or share memories and family
wisdom (Marcus, 2012b), among others.
2.4 UI LANGUAGES
As stated earlier, we assume that HCI takes place between different actors (users,
systems, designers) in a specific setting or paradigm. The semiotics of interaction
is closely related to language as a system of signs. The semiotics of interaction is
by definition time-based and the same holds true for language. Because of this, we
may find some interesting parallels. The HCI/UI designer establishes grammar rules
(syntax) for the combination of its elements. UIs are built from different components
(metaphors, mental models, navigation, interaction, appearance) (Marcus, 2002). The
manner in which UIs are built is governed by a set of rules given by the designer,
for example, every UI produced can follow a different intrinsic language grammar.
The choice of elements is then subject to the goal (pragmatics) of the entire UI (see
Garrett, 2002). Therefore, we should structure the UI language according to the actors
and audience we want to address.
In order to better grasp the domain of language communication (in our case, how
the UI embodies language concepts), the semiotics of interaction borrows some con-
cepts from linguistics (and partly from cognitive science, especially mental models).
Perhaps the most prominent in this respect is the linguistic model of language, which
describes specific orders of subject, verb, adverb, and object in a sentence. Inter-
estingly, Indo-European languages give prominence to contrasts to build a grammar
logic (substantive and verb) (Whorf, 2012, p. 309), in that they are binary. In contrast,
“Nootka has no parts of speech; the simplest utterance is a sentence,” and “[l]ong
sentences are sentences of sentences” (Ibid., p. 310). Because of these differences,
we will focus first on the English language. All the combinations exist, but the pre-
vailing model is subject-object-verb, or SOV (see Figure 2.3) (Dryer, 2008), which is
mimicked in graphical UIs (GUIs). The user first must select the object (e.g., a file)
then the corresponding action (e.g., move to trash). A different sequence prevails in