Semiotic basis for designing product architecture
Year: 2013
Editor: Udo Lindemann, Srinivasan V, Yong Se Kim, Sang Won Lee, John Clarkson, Gaetano Cascini
Author: Hu, Fei; Sato, Keichii; Zhang, Xi; Zhu, Taiping
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: Guangdong University of Technology, People's Republic of China; 2: Illinois Institute of Technology, U.S.A; 3: Wuhan University of Technology, People's Republic of China
Page(s): 159-168
ISBN: 978-1-904670-47-6
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
On modular product architecture, use related issues such as usability and interactive experience have not been addressed enough in product architecture. This paper introduces a conceptual framework “Semiotic Approach to Product Architecture Design (SAPAD)” to incorporate how users embed, develop and interpret meaning and values in product use. In this framework, three dimensions of human-product interaction are introduced. The first is user behavior dimension that represents activity, process, action and operation; the second is object dimension that represents ensemble, object, unit and component. The third dimension represents significations that includes six worlds based on the concept of Semiotic Ladder by Ronald Stamper, which are physical world, syntactic world, empiric world, semantics world, pragmatics world and social world. A case study was conducted to develop a SAPAD model on Oolong tea making activity in a Chinese household. The case study demonstrated that SAPAD can effectively reflect semiotic aspects of the use process on the product architecture that leads to the enhancement of meaningfulness and effectiveness of the product in real use situations.
Keywords: Meaningful experience, signification architecture, product architecture, semiotic ladder, user-product interaction