1. Overview
The Semantic Turn is an attempt to explain and introduce a paradigm shift, a new way of understanding design as a whole, and especially as a science. It builds upon the various chapters in design history and introduces a new way of thinking about design. Coining one way of putting it “Design is making sense of things”. [Krippendorff(1969)].
The emphasis is on understanding how artifacts, be it graphic, informational or social, are attributed with meaning by the stakeholders involved. It also provides a clear distinction about the meaning of use, in such a way that humans do not react or function on the basis of the physical qualities of things, but rather with the meanings attached to the things by culture, use and context.
The book takes an extensive look at the histories of design as a science, as well as introducing new concepts and providing the reader with a solid knowledge base for scientific design. There is a strong focus on semantic, or meaning based design, and a lot of philosophical roots for it, and the way meanings live with artifacts in use, and how new meanings are formed during the life cycle of an artifact.
In addition to the semantic theory, the book provides views on the more traditional disciplines of industrial design, ergonomics, cognitive science, information technology and others.
The book provides a solid foundation that enables designers to pursue a more scientific and semantic, meaning based approach to design, as well as means to clarify and explain the ideas that go into their designs. It also brings into consideration the stakeholders in design, and how to communicate decisions and influence the stakeholders, by participating them in the design process and thus enabling them to experience the various meanings and how they change with context.
The Semantic Turn also takes into account the new challenges in design, with the artifacts being more intangible, such as multi-user systems, services and interfaces as well as the semantic, meaning based approach.
It is an excellent read and a good eye opener into the meanings behind design decisions, it also provides a solid foundation of design as a science, and the importance of meaning – the semantic approach. The author – Klaus Krippendorff is a professor for Cybernetics, Language and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania, and a distinguished expert in the field of human-centered design.
2. Main Areas
2.1 Meaning
One of the main ideas of the book is the focus on meaning. Understandable as it is a book on semantics. The point of meaning is context specific, it is always someones construct, related and dependent on culture and the entity perceiving it. This transitive nature of meaning is essential in understanding how people interact with designs and interfaces.
2.2 Artifacts
The book takes a broader look at artifacts, going beyond the traditional view of subjects and physical objects. It embraces the digital age with services, interfaces, projects, discourses and such. Designing for these new artifacts requires new approaches and overcoming new challenges. Artifacts and their meaning also evolve during their live cycle. Going beyond this distinction, the book goes further with artifact ecology. These ecologies are referred from the text book definition of ecology: "multi-species interaction in a common environment". The book takes the view that artifacts form human made ecologies, which form dependencies and evolve, devolve, mutate and dissipate in a similar fashion as in nature. The ecology approach brings about a strong focus in the interaction between artfiacts, and the fact that the meaning of an artifact can change and evolve independent of itself with changes in the underlying ecology.
3. My thoughts on The Semantic Turn
It was an extremely interesting read, especially since it had a lot of correlation to the work we do at my workplace. There is a big focus on semantic design, or designing for the users and considering the user stories, meanings and user interaction. The understanding of meaning in design goes deep into how to design good interfaces, as the understanding of use context as well as cultural habits is essential in creating functional, transparent and easy to use systems.
The book is quite theory heavy, understandable as it takes on a new approach in the science of design, but it makes it a quite hard read. To get to the bottom of the meaning of things and the methods and contexts, one needs to focus heavily while reading the Semantic Turn. Nevertheless, while being theory heavy, it provides much in examples, graphs, images and real world references to alleviate and explain better the concepts described.
I would state that this book is a must read for interaction designers and service designers of the modern age. The focus shift from intended use to the meanings attributed to an artifact is an intense and appreciated one. The strengths of the book come from a deep understanding of the history and philosophy of design and semantics.
Even though the book is quite new, most of the examples and content is related to older technologies, such as the UIs of the 90s or industrial design related. It would be fabulous to have more modern devices, device ecosystems and content platforms in the context of semantic design as well. The opportunities and challenges with cloud computing, tablets and mobile content consumption would be an excellent addition to the deep theory of the book.
Anyhow, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in real design of services or interfaces in the modern age. It provides an excellent basis for semantic design, and I think I'll come back and read the book with thought later on again.