Instrument semiotics: a semiotic approach to interface components

This paper will briefly present a semiotic approach to instrument interfaces based on a conceptual analysis of display and control components and their compositional semantics. Display and control components can be considered as prototypical objects that are themselves constructed from combinations of more elementary signs expressed in some combination of media. Different types of signs (or ‘representational modalities’) and different types of media have different semantic and syntactic properties. These properties will to some extent determine what different combinations of media and signs are good for, i.e. what kinds of information can be adequately expressed in a given media–modality combination, and what kinds of cognitive support it will give to the social agents using it in a work context. The relevance of such an approach is partly in enhancing our understanding of instrument interfaces and human–machine interaction in complex work domains and partly to support the design and development of flexible and tailorable instrument interfaces.