Semiosic Processes and Design Processes. Inventiveness, Dialogue, Narrativity, Translation

Abstract

Design semiotics could lead to two lines of research: the study of design products and the study of design processes. As much as the analysis of artifacts has significance, the survey about semiosic processes inside design processes is the one that defines the unique nature of semiotics in the design context. This investigation follows “the pragmatist route” to design semiotics, for two reasons: (1) because it understands design as an activity that leverages the concept of inventive abduction and can provide answers to cognitive challenges; (2) because the work of design is never to be conceived as concluded in the final result, but embedded in a f low of unlimited semiosis. I will focus on the concept of semiosis according to Peirce’s semiotics, understood as a process of production of sense. In this way, I will deal with the following four processes: Inventiveness, whose logical model refers to abduction, the process that enables exploration of the ways to possible meanings. Based on Bakhtin’s literary theory and Bohm’s epistemology, dialogicity, which will be considered as the social interaction model underpinning every social idea of design. Narrativity, understood as the general scheme that is implemented in a project, understood as a series of actions leading to the achievement of a goal, and as a process of transformation. Translation, considered not only as an interpretation process that takes place between different forms of expression, but especially as a transition from a problem or desire to an “interpretant artifact.”