Author: dhilhorst

Last week I was watching a German television show (they actually do have worthwhile programming at times) which investigated and tested noise levels of household appliances such as vacuum cleaners, dish washers and kitchen robots, among others. Generally I would conclude that the less noise these various machines made the better. Yet, user research indicated that a vacuum cleaner, for instance, which made less noise was perceived as less powerful and therefore less effective. Odd, is it not?

Towards the end the research concluded that some product characteristics are so fundamental to the (positive) value assigned by users that removing (or reducing) them will translate into a negatively affected perception. There is an interesting line to be drawn to design and usability. However the question remains how this would apply to user interfaces and web design in general. I’m still trying to see what role user expectation, accustomedness and perception play and how some assumptions designers make can have an opposite effect. Can you think of any analogies similar to the vacuum cleaner case, but applied to user interfaces or web design?

What are we talking about? Semantics is a topic that has been much discussed
last year and still remains an important issue (although it’s becoming
somewhat of a buzzword. Hype or reality?). This post is not aimed at discussing
the value or importance of semantics as such, but rather its general framework
and its application to hypertext documents and web sites in general.

Semiotics

Semiotics is commonly known as the general science of signs. Semiotics is composed
of three aspects: a syntactical aspect (syntax or syntactics), a semantic aspect
(semantics) and a pragmatic aspect (pragmatics).

Syntactics (Syntax)

Different forms of data exchange are constituted of signs or combination of
signs (language, code, non-verbal signs — among others). Syntax defines
a set of rules to be applied when exhanging data, thus “the relationship
of signs to what they stand for”. Breaking these rules results in a syntactical
disturbance. An example of this type of disturbance in human data processing
are spelling errors.

For example, using an element spelled <stronk> instead of
<strong>. But also ommiting a closing tag on empty elements
such as <img>. The related DTD
(Document Type Definition) or more recently a Schema
(XML)
contains the rules that define the correct spelling or application of (the signs
that constitute) an element (note: in XML the number of elements are unlimited).

Semantics

Semantics applies to the meaning of data. When exchanging data sender and receiver
will have to assign the same meaning to particular (combinations of) signs,
thus “the relation of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable”.
If this condition is not respected a semantic disturbance will occur. An example
of the above mentioned disturbance is a discussion between two individuals not
being able to understand each other.

The meaning (or context) of specific elements is what we commonly refer to
as the semantic value of code. Therefor the use of <p> elements
is justified in the context of a paragraph and likewise <hn>
n{1,6} elements are used to represent headers in a document. Furthermore elements
have to be nested correctly. For example — in a (X)HTML document —
an <h1> element can not contain a paragraph. The DTD or Schema
explicitely contains nesting rules. However it can not evaluate if the context
of a particular element is semantically correct. Current validators check a
document for syntactical errors, but remain limited in their aptitude to discern
issues related to semantics. The question remains if it’s technically
possible to build an analysis tool spitting out suggestions regarding the semantic
value of a document. Dan Cederholm started
a practical initiative known as SimpleQuiz
— discussing the semantic value of elements in hypertext documents.

Pragmatics

This aspect describes the effect a particular signal has on the behaviour
of the receiver, thus the “relation of signs to (human) interpreters”.
If the effect is different from the senders initial intention a pragmatic disturbance
occurs. A suitable example are speed delimiter signs found on most roads, with
various applicable values. No spelling errors have been made and the data is
correctly interpreted by both sender and receiver — yet some drivers ignore
this signal by speeding.

Pragmatics relate to some extend to usability. How will a user (receiver) act
or react to a given condition, situation or signal (sender). It’s become
best practice to avoid underlining regular text in documents (emphasis), and
reserve this practice exclusively for hyperlinks. Abstracting from context,
syntax nor semantics forbid the above mentioned practice. However, underlining
text that is not a hyperlink (or ommiting to underline a hyperlink) results
in a pragmatic disturbance — users expect a hyperlink to be underlined
(and vice versa).

Resources:

• “Effective Diagrammatic
  Communication: Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Issues”, C. A.
  Gurr (1999).
• “Towards
  The Semantic Web”. J. Davies et al (2002).
• “Semiotics:
  A Primer for Designers”, C. Hodge (2003).
• Assorted courses (i.e. information management, processing and design) followed
  during my MSc
  degree at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2003).

Andrei Herasimchuk left a
very sensible comment on my previous entry, Design
and Usability: Part 1. He stated that "The aesthetic quality of something
is intrinsically locked with how functional and usable it is". After thinking
about this statement for a few days I could not think of a single argument to
refute it. However, after a while, I started to deconstruct his sentence and
stumbled over the specific word aesthetics. Bluntly, looking the
word up in a dictionary yields the following definition (among slight variations):

• aes-thet-ic adj. —
  of or concerning the appreciation of beauty or good taste.

Now, I’ve always learned that:
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which is a paraphrase of a statement
by Plato. To me the beauty or good taste of an object (or subject) is not intrinsically
locked with how functional and usable it is.

For
example, an automobile is mainly a functional object – transportation from point
A (initial position) to point B (final destination). Nonetheless most of us
value the aesthetics of a car highly, for some it might even be their main buying
argument. But does the outer shell of a car (thus its beauty or good taste)
define how functional or usable it is? I think not. We might experience it as
being more functional or usable. But abstracting from beauty a car’s functionality
or usability is defined by how it is designed and not so much by its aesthetic
value. Aesthetics are subjective.

Returning visitors of SuperfluousBanter might have noticed that Andrei’s blog
Design
by Fire has been added to the Regular Visits section in the sidebar. His
blog is an excellent destination to read about topics related to interface design
and usability, among others. Good content, good design, good code. Run and bookmark
that site!

Topics which
were initially planned for Part 2 will now move to Part 3. In my next post I will
try to discern some of the factors and elements related to usability and functionality.
But in the mean time: what do you think about the relationship between aesthetics,
design, functionality and usability? Discuss.