Through the artefact. What has semiotics done and what can it do? semiotics for design?

Abstract

Design is also partly responsible for the desire to possess objects, to the detriment of the desire to act through them. However, a trend reversal has been underway for some time now that conceives of the artefact as a stimulator of actions and behaviour; a design whose purpose focuses on the service it offers users, on the cognitive and emotional benefit that the artefact is able to encourage, on its cultural, economic, and anthropological consequences. The attention of design towards environmental sustainability, gender issues, multiculturalism, etc. is witness to this. As is the growing critical view of social reality. Hence the question: what can semiotics do for design? By retracing the history of the relationship between semiotics and design, it is proposed to overturn the conception of the text-artefact: from an object of analysis to investigate what it tells us, to a device that, because of the way it is conceived, triggers operations for the benefit of its users.