The semantic turn refers to a paradigm shift in the design of artifacts – industrial, graphic, informational, architectural, and social – from an emphasis on how artifacts ought to function to what they mean to those affected by them – semantics being a concern for meaning. It provides a new foundation for professional design, a detailed design discourse, codifications of proven methods, compelling scientific justifications of its products, and a clear identity for professional designers working within a network of their stakeholders.
The semantic turn suggests a distinction between the technical and user-irrelevant working of artifacts and the human interactions with artifacts, individually, socially, and culturally. Attending to the technical dimension of artifacts, for example, by applied scientists, mechanical or electronic engineers, and experts in economics, production, and marketing, is called technology-centered design. It addresses its subject matter in terms that ordinary users may not understand and applies design criteria users of technology do not care about. Attending to the meanings that users bring to their artifacts, how they use them and talk about them and among various stakeholders, is the domain of human-centered design. For ordinary users, the makeup and technical functioning of artifacts is mere background of what really matters to them.
A prime example for this distinction is the design of personal computers. For most people, the operations inside a computer are incomprehensible, but far from troubling because computers are designed to be experienced primarily through their interfaces. Human-computer interfaces consist of interactively rearrangeable icons, texts, and controls that users can understand in everyday terms and manipulate towards desirable ends. The design of intelligent artifacts suggests that the old adage of “form follows function” is no longer validKrippendorff, Klaus & Butter, Reinhart (1993). Where Meanings Escape Functions. Design Management Journal 4, 2, pp. 30–37. – except for the simplest of tools. The semantic turn suggests that human-centered designers’ unique expertise resides in the design of human interfaces with artifacts that are meaningful, easy to use, even enjoyable to experience, be it simple kitchen implements, public service systems, architectural spaces, or information campaigns. Although an automobile should obviously function as a means of transportation, human-centered designers emphasize the experiences of driving, ease of operation, feeling of safety, including the social meanings of driving a particular automobile. As artifacts have to work within many dimensions, human-centered designers must have a sense of and be able to work with all relevant stakeholders addressing different dimensions of the artifact.
The Semantic Turn: a book and its themes The Semantic Turn is also the title of a book by Klaus Krippendorff,Krippendorff, Klaus (2006). The Semantic Turn; A New Foundation for Design. Boca Raton, London, New York: Taylor&Francis, CRC Press. Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, cybernetician, degreed designer, and researcher who has published much to advance the science for design. The subtitle of the book, A new Foundation for Design, suggests a redesign of design practices in a human-centered design culture. Krippendorff takes an encompassing view of design, centering it on the meanings that artifacts acquire and what is or should be designers' primary concern.
The Semantic Turn represents an evolution from "Product Semantics" by Krippendorff and Butter,Krippendorff, Klaus & Butter, Reinhart (Eds.) (1989) which was defined as "A systematic inquiry into how people attribute meanings to artifacts and interact with them accordingly" and "a vocabulary and methodology for designing artifacts in view of the meanings they could acquire for their users and the communities of their stakeholders". While retaining the emphasis on meaning and on the importance of both theory and practice, The Semantic Turn extends the concerns of designers first to the new challenges of design, including the design of ever more intangible artifacts such as services, identities, interfaces, multi-user systems, projects and discourses; and second, to consider the meaning of artifacts in use, in language, in the whole life cycle of the artifact, and in an ecology of artifacts.
Design For Krippendorff, design "brings forth what would not come naturally (...); proposes realizable artifacts to others (...) must support the lives of ideally large communities (...) and must make sense to most, ideally to all who have a stake on them".Krippendorff (2006), pp. 25–26 Design thus is intimatelly involved with the meaning that stakeholders attribute to artifacts. Designers "consider possible futures (...) evaluate their desirability (...) and create and work out realistic paths from the present towards desirable futures, and propose them to those that can bring a design to fruition".Krippendorff (2006), pp. 28–29 Acknowledging that all design serves others, The Semantic Turn does not treat THE user as statistical fiction, but as knowledgeable stakeholders and necessary partners in human-centered design processes.Krippendorff (2006), pp. 63–65
Predecessors of human-centeredness Krippendorff quotes the Greek philosopher Protagoras who is believed to have been the first to express human-centeredness in words by saying that "Man is the measure of all things, of things that are (...) and of things that are not (...)." Krippendorff goes on to cite the color theory of J. W. von GoetheFriedrich, Theodor, et al. (Ed.) (undated). Goethe. Vierzigster Teil: Zur Farbenlehre.(original 1810). Leipzig: Verlag Reclam. who exposed Isaac Newton's spectral theory of colors as epistemologically flawed by pointing out that color is the product of the human eye. Color does not exist without it. Krippendorff refers to the Italian philosopher G. Vico for opposing R. Descartes by claiming we humans know what we have constructed, made up, cognitively, materially, or socially,Glasersfeld, Ernst von (1995). Radical Constructivism; A Way of Knowing and Learning. Washington, DC: Falmer Press. to the biologists J. Uexküll for his species-specific theory of meaningUexküll, Jacob von (1934/1957), A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds. pp. 5–80 in C. H. Schiller (Ed.). Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept. New York: International University Press. and H. Maturana and F. Varela for developing a biological foundation of cognition,Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Varela (1988). The Tree of Knowledge; The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston, MA: Shambhala. to the psychologist J. J. Gibson for his conception of affordance, which acknowledges that our environment does not account for our perception, it merely affords our sensory-motor coordinationsGibson, James J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin. or it does not; and to the anthropological linguist B. L. Whorf for his recognition that our perceptions are correlated with language, its grammar and vocabulary.Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1956), Language, Thought and Reality, John B. Carroll (Ed.). New York: John Wiley and MIT. Most important, Krippendorff allies himself with L. Wittgenstein's definition of meaning as use,Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. culminating in the axiom that Humans do not see and act on the physical qualities of things, but on what they mean to them.Krippendorff (2006), pp. 47
Meaning Attributing meaning to something follows from sensing it, and is a prelude to action. " One always acts according to the meaning of whatever one faces "Krippendorff (2006), pp. 58 and the consequences of these actions in turn become part of the meanings of what one interacts with. Meanings are always someone's construction and depend on context and culture. The same artifact may invoke different meanings at different times, in different contexts of use, and for different people. To design artifacts for use by others calls on designers to understand the understanding of others, a second order understanding that is fundamentally unlike the understanding of physical things. Since meanings cannot be observed directly, designers need to carefully observe the actions that imply certain meanings; involve themselves in dialog with their stakeholders; and invite them to participate in the design process.
Meaning of artifacts in use People acquire the meanings of artifacts by their interfacing with them, where meanings become anticipated usabilities. Krippendorff does not limit the concept of interfaces to human computer interactions, however. For him, the concept applies to any artifact one faces. To users, artifacts are perceived as affordances, as the kind of interactions they enable or prohibit. Thus scissors and coffee cups are experienced as interfaces, just as personal computers are. Their physical or computational makeup become background phenomena to use. The meaning of an artifact in use is then " the range of imaginable senses and actions that users have reasons to expect" .Krippendorff (2006), pp. 83 Ideal interfaces are self-evident and " intrinsically motivating interactions between users and their artifacts" .Krippendorff (2006), pp. 83
Drawing on Heidegger's explorations of the human use of technology, Krippendorff argues that all artifacts must be designed to afford three stages of use: initial recognition, intermediate exploration, and ideally, unproblematic reliance. The latter is achieved when the artifact is so incorporated into the user's world that it becomes hardly noticed, is taken for granted while looking through it to what is to be accomplished. Recognition involves users' categorizations, how close the artifact is to the ideal type of its kind. Exploration is facilitated by informatives such as state indicators, progress reports, confirmations of actions and readiness, alarm signals, close correlations between actions and their expected effects, maps of possibilities, instructions, error messages, and multi-sensory feedback. Users' intrinsic motivation arises from reliance, the seemingly effortless, unproblematic yet skillful engagement with artifacts free of disruptions. A well designed interface enables unambiguous recognition, effective exploration, and leads to enjoyable reliance. To accomplish these transitions, human-centered designers need to involve second-order understanding of users' cognitive models, cultural habits, and competencies.
Typically, users approach their artifacts with very different competencies. The Semantic Turn offers the possibility of accommodating these differences by allowing the design of several semantic layers. For example, contemporary Xerox machines exhibit one layer for making copies, another for clearing paper jams, a third for replacing defective parts by trained service personnel, and a fourth is reserved for the factory repair of replaced components.
Meaning of artifacts in language "The fate of all artifacts is decided in language" ,Krippendorff (2006), pp. 148 says Krippendorff. Indeed, designers must pay attention to the narratives in which an artifact appears as soon as it enters the conversations among stakeholders, bystanders, critics, and users, to the names that categorize the artifact as being of one kind or another, and to the adjectives that direct perception to particular qualities (is it a fast car? a clumsy cell phone? a high class dress?). Such characterizations can make or break an artifact and designers cannot ignore how people talk about them. Krippendorff proposes that artifacts should be designed so that their interfaces are [easily] narratableKrippendorff (2006), pp. 147, emphasis added and fit into social or communicational relationships.