The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Socio-cultural Codes

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“Metaphor then, is important to understanding interactive media. Connotation on the other hand has not really been considered in relation to interactive media. The focus in HCI has largely been to increase efficiency and usability by reducing ambiguity, thus removing the possibility of connotation. Thinking about the connotative aspects might provide new avenues for signification and further layers of interactive media. It might give us an extra tool to help us understand how people interpret interactive media within the larger social context in which they appear. (…) If interpretation is important to understanding interactive media, then the semiotic concept of codes is particularly relevant to developing a semiotics of interactive media, because it identifies interactive media objects as texts that can be decoded or even recoded culturally by a user at the interface level. It is important here, not to confuse cultural codes with binary code or programming, even though there is also something inherently semiotic about them.” (p78)

Annotation
O’Neill develops his case away from the denotative binary HCI perspective into a more nuanced world that visual communication occupies through connotation and metaphor. These two areas of nuanced communication have been a staple in visual communication. The selection and shaping of semiotic signs has been a valuable tool in the designer’s skill set, but how these tools work cannot be quantified. Visual communication draws from the socio-cultural codes of the relevant audience to encode meaning in subtle and interesting ways, to draw the audience into reading the design. Metaphor helps put the audience into a familiar place to understand how to interpret the meaning encoded in the design. Denotation, or this means this may communicate quickly but can be cold and, well, binary. Connotation on the other hand draws on an abstract richness of human communication that can, if interpreted correctly by the target audience, impart far more meaning than it’s parts. This is the difference between automated and anaesthetic experiences, and a phenomenology of enjoyment that an aesthetic experience can afford.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Variance and Invariance

O’Neill, S. (2008) Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer-Verlag.

“In Gibson’s view of perception, an active perceiver picks up and distinguishes between variant and invariant information. Either of these may be information about the perceiver or the environment but the distinction between the variant and invariant builds to create an awareness of the perceiver’s place within that environment.” (p61)

Annotation
The relationship between ourselves in the world, and the environment that surrounds us at any one time, is an important perceptual one. The environment is always perceptively relative to the person in that environment. They are aware that if they move, spatially and temporally that environment persistently envelope them. The perceptual changes within that environment are what guide and suggest options. These perceptual changes can be described as variant and invariant. In other words, some information within the environment stays constant and some will vary allowing behaviour change to be enacted. To give a simple example of variance and invariance it may be useful to look at an interactive experience on a computer. During any interaction the keyboard, screen and device will always be there (invariant) despite what is happening on the screen or whatever input device is being used (variant). The changes perceived between what is in the environment (keyboard, screen, device, table, room etc.) and what is changing within that environment is directly attributed to the user’s sense of being in the interaction. Whether this experience can be described as an aesthetic or an anaesthetic experience is another matter. What is important is the distinction between the two states and how this helps the conscious and subconscious directly as embodied knowledge perceive what is happening and can happen next.

Beneath Interpretation… Pragmatism Meets Phenomenology

SHUSTERMAN, R. (1991) Beneath Interpretation. In: D.R. HILEY, J.F. BOHMAN, and R. SHUSTERMAN (Eds.) The Interpretive Turn. Cornell University Press. pp102-128

“Interpretation is also practiced and theorized in terms of formal structure with the aim not so much of exposing hidden meanings but of connecting unconcealed features and surfaces so as to see and present the work as a well-related whole.” (p108)

Annotation
The formal structure of interpretation from a pragmatist perspective seeks to connect the parts with the whole experience being interpreted. It is not so much focused on simply revealing the hidden, it is more interested in the connections between the internal and external features of an experience to arrive at a full understanding of its meaning. This separates this from a phenomenological approach that is concerned with revealing the hidden. So pragmatism supports interpretation and synthesised with phenomenology can provide a structure to not only examine an experience through the aesthetic, but also to strengthen the validity of a phenomenological methodology against accusations of being unscientific. Although a full Ihdean postphenomenology is not what is being advocated, there are lessons in the synthesising the best of both philosophies into a practical visual communication methodology. 

Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Pragmatics and Phenomenology

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“I have coined a special terminology, reflected in the title, postphenomenology and technoscience. And while a postphenomenology clearly owes its roots to phenomenology, it is a deliberate adaptation or change in postphenomenology that reflects historical changes in the twenty first century.” (p5)

Annotation:
Postphenomenology is useful as although I am staying within phenomenology, Ihde’s ideas do show possibilities to how I can synthesise pragmatic aesthetics with a phenomenological methodology, to reveal and visually communicate an experience of an interaction to help interaction designers. 

Creative Visualization… Ambiguity, Connotation & Denotation

DAKE, D. (2005b) Creative Visualization. In: K. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, G. BARBATSIS and K. KENNEY (Eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp23-42.

“Can we trust a message that can be so differently interpreted? Ambiguity provides a vital function in aesthetic visual communication. Ambiguity slows the mind and suggests experiencing the image more fully in many dimensions. An idea is a temporary mental event; thus, words cannot always adequately convey the complex, structural, relational, an contextual nature of interrelationships among aesthetic phenomena.” (pp31-32)

Annotation:
Ambiguity should be a device used only when connotational meaning is required such as layered contextual meanings for adults and children. When only a denotational meaning is required ambiguity should be avoided. This returns the conversation back to a semiotic one to help construct an aesthetic that achieves its intended outcome that needed to be communicated. 

Aesthetics Theory… Facilitate the Transmission

DAKE, D. (2005a) Aesthetics Theory. In: K. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, G. BARBATSIS and K. KENNEY (Eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp3-22.

“A verbal analysis of aesthetics only deals with one part at a time and is therefore always incomplete in description and understanding. In the creative design of visual messages, as well as in creative viewing and interpretation, flexibility of structural construction is vital. Flexibility provides for the purely perceptual apprehension of novelty, originality, and message integrity. Ritualized, stereotyped, and repetitive messages are not as likely to attract or sustain viewer attention. Therefore, the message’s flexibility is crucial for discovering and imparting significant aesthetic aspects of meaning.” (p8)

Annotation:
The flexibility referred to here is referring to an aesthetic that is the apotheosis to the ‘visual design’ attitude. The richness that visual communication can bring rests in the ability to ensure that the design all works towards its intended outcome. The semiotic structure will provide a lexicon of visual language to facilitate the transmission of the intended collective message with the minimal disruption by noise. How this is achieved should not be prescriptive and not just utilitarian, nor should the design be homogenised into the lowest creative denominator for the intended audience. A successful aesthetic attracts and retains attention and focus. A poor aesthetic reduces the attention and length of time needed to perceive and interpret what actions need to be taken. There is a difference between a simplistic (and therefore a weak design), and a design that aids interaction because it makes interaction simple by easily facilitating its complexity through clarity of design.

Aesthetics Theory… Perception of the Transmitted Message

DAKE, D. (2005a) Aesthetics Theory. In: K. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, G. BARBATSIS and K. KENNEY (Eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp3-22.

“Significant aesthetic perception begins, however, before conscious awareness processes can make reasoned decisions. Aesthetic perception preceded cortical information processing and therefore any conscious awareness of associative symbolic inferences.” (p7)

Annotation:
Dake connects the perception of the transmitted message as resultant to how the aesthetic helps that transmission. The aesthetic of the visually communicated message in any one interaction will only aid perceived understanding if the semiotics used in the visual to communicate what was meant. If this fails then the aesthetic is simply noise leading to incorrect interpretations as to what to do next.

Aesthetics Theory… Triadic Interrelationship

DAKE, D. (2005a) Aesthetics Theory. In: K. SMITH, S. MORIARTY, G. BARBATSIS and K. KENNEY (Eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp3-22.

“Aesthetics permeates all interactions between these three [object:maker:viewer] components of visual communication. Relationships may not immediately reveal the exact intentions of the creator or help the viewer discover any potential hidden interpretations; but intentions, of both the maker and the viewer can alter everyone’s perspective on imagistic meaning. Knowledge of meaning can become clearer through a deliberate process of analysis and interpretation. Heightened awareness of one’s own mental imagery is the first step to assessing this deeper aesthetic aspect of visual communication.” (p6)

Annotation:
The triadic interrelationship of object:maker:viewer (p6) to the interpretation of the meaning according to Dake is framed in an idea as the creator (designer) as author. This is too restrictive for a phenomenological-focused inquiry into the relationships between visual communication, aesthetics of interaction, perception and interpretation. If this triadic is expanded to not think of the creator as author but instead as a semiotic sender, and the viewer (user) as the receiver of the message, then the interrelationship between the two places focus on how they perceive the ‘object’ as a transmission of that meaning. Within interaction design this interrelationship is not a simply one-way transaction as the nature of interaction involves a feedback loop that informs where the interaction goes. Therefore there simply is not just one semiotic message being interpreted, but a continual semiotic dialogue leading the user towards a conclusion to their interactive task. The behavioural change that the visual communication of the dialogue affords is resultant on active interpretation within the user as they perform the interactions.

Visual Communication and Exprience

This post is part of a draft for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal and represents an idea-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.

The mere understanding of a Visual Communication graphic outcome in itself does not induce action. It is through the active interpretation of the outcome that shapes perceptual selectivity within the viewer (McCullough, 2005, p34). Through this cognitive processing, behavioural change is enacted through the viewer taking from the outcome a personal interpretation of varying strengths, dependent upon their own intellectual and socio-cultural ability. This intellectual appropriation of an action, suggested through the communicational situation created by the graphic outcome’s internal structure, happens within the communicational situation as a consummation of that very experience. When defining such an experience it is an essentially an autotelic experience that is being discussed. Psychologist Csikszentimihalyi (1990) frames two forms of experience - autotelic and exotelic (p67). These terms are derived from the Greek: telos meaning goal, auto meaning self and exo meaning outside. Csikszentimihalyi defines an autotelic experience as a self-contained experience where the reward is intrinsic to the experience itself, whilst exotelic is an experience where activities are performed for external reasons to the self. Experiences are a combination of both an internal and external elements, but it is within an autotelic experience that the optimal element is an end in itself that is intrinsically rewarding. Most experiences we have in our conscious day can be described as anaesthetic. For Dewey (1980) the description of an anaesthetic experience is one that does not begin or cease at any particular place, it is slack and discursive with no initiations or conclusions, where connections between incidental components within the experiences are unconcerning (p41). These everyday experiences are as Csikszentimihalyi names exotelic. They are external to our own existential self-determined purpose, and feature events we mechanically do as a norm of our existence.

Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is self-purposeful which is analogous to a pragmatist philosophical aesthetic experience. From a pragmatist perspective an aesthetic experience is shaped not only through visuals, touch, smell, and hearing, but also from the past experiences of the individual experiencing it. But past experiences can at times be contradictory, ambiguous or complex. An aesthetic experience emerges from a lived experience, where the self can be lost in the moment but can return, feeling nourished and contented, the “irreducible totality of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and making meaning in a setting, including the perception and sensation of their own actions” (McCarthy and Wright, 2004, p85). Dourish suggests from a pragmatist perspective that the world is “already filled with meaning. Its meaning is to be found in the way in which it reveals itself to us as being available for our actions” (2004, p116). The sharpness in contrast between a self-purposeful experience and everyday exotelic is immediately noticeable, even if consciously at the time it is not realised. In this sharp contrast it is impossible to combine the special qualities of the experience within the usual exotelic structure, so that the special qualities are given a status outside the everyday (p42).

So far this appears to be an intellectual process, but it is also an emotional, practical and mechanical process that together constitute integral components within experience. The complexity of these various components are interlinked and not ordered in succession during an interaction with events, people, objects and ideas. They do not assume ascendency over each other, but through the linkage move toward a culmination rather than a cessation. What is crucial here is that the culmination is not dependent upon the mechanistic component of the experience to finish, as the consummation is not wholly a conscious state. Within an aesthetic experience Dewey states that the experience is “anticipated throughout and is recurrently savored with special intensity” (p57). This type of experience is separated from the everyday anaesthetic experiences, and it is framed within this form of experiencing that a communicational situation is created by Visual Communication. As Frascara explains the act of communication is not the designer’s objective but designing the impact of that communication is (p13). The interaction between meaning and the viewer is paramount, and the interaction between visual elements within the graphic outcomes aids the reception, leading to the necessary change in behaviour. This interaction becomes a self-experience within the viewer once they take notice of the graphic outcome. How they engage making it a self-experience can be framed within a phenomenological flow proposed by Csikszentimihalyi. Dourish is aware that a phenomenological perspective framed using pragmatist aesthetics is only one perspective amongst others that has embodiment as a central focus. But he argues that phenomenology looks at “the pretheoretical, prerational world of everyday experience” (p106) making phenomenology a relevant starting point to account for the relationality between meaning and action.

References

CSIKSZENTIMIHALYI, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
DOURISH, P. (2004). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
McCULLOUGH, M. (2005). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Pecha Kucha: 20 slides - 20 seconds.

I'm presenting an overview of an aspect of my research position to an audience of 75 at Pecha Kucha Edinburgh #10 on 10th December.

Here is essentially what I'd like to say on the night (but if you're there it will be mostly ad-libbed).

"Like many from a creative design discipline I’m always confronting people’s perceptions of design as one of surface. This is a common misconception that in my broader academic research I’m attempting to dispel. The aesthetics of surface will upon closer inspection give way to the aesthetics of use. My design discipline of Visual Communication is continually prone to being seen as purely a subjective exercise. But it is about the use of communication.

In approaching the aesthetics of use I am following the work of Jorge Frascara who argues that Visual Communication is about changing behaviour. Visual Communication as a discipline has two main design outcomes: graphic design and illustration. The discipline’s name places the emphasis upon the method (design), the objective (communication) and the medium (visual), rather than just the creation of graphic forms (outcomes). The quality of it’s objective is measured in how behaviour is changed.

To understand how this change can be measured I am developing a visual phenomenological methodology through which to understand experience. Using hermeneutic phenomenology as a philosophical grounding, I’ve begun to capture and visually identify themes of experience. These themes can be interpreted to reveal the structures of a studied experience - in fact some of the volunteers are in the audience tonight - [shout out] - and where experimented on in here last month.

The phenomenological themes are revealed through a hermeneutic circle of interpretive analysis. The researcher (me) isolates, using an established framework by van Manen, delves deeper from a position of existing understanding. By breaking each participant’s experience down into constitutive themes, these themes can be individually interpreted - in my case visually. Then the themes can be combined and interpreted as a whole, before being tested for validity and uniqueness to the particular experience under study. This then changes the original understanding, moving the research forward into a deeper understanding of how that experience is structured.

Under-pinning this hermeneutic phenomenological perspective is essentially an existential philosophical ground espoused by Martin Heidegger. Simplifying some heavy philosophy in the few minutes I have, I may be forgiven for summing this up as the being of being. That opens things up into a consideration of the self in the lifeworld which can be separated into four existentials: lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation.

Lived space or spatiality is our being in the world. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. We, in a way, for a time become the space we are in - our felt space. Within a particular experience we may be conscious or not of this felt space - each aspect of this space consciously or sub-consciously influencing our actions.

Lived body or corporeality is our embodiment in the world. We make sense through our senses, and that sense of our bodies within our experience shapes our experience. Embodiment is how we encounter physical and social reality directly rather than abstractly. Embodiment denotes a form of participative status, a property that allows us to make our engagement with the world meaningful.

Lived time or temporality is our subjective perception of time - how we understand our sense of time and how it affects us. Temporality includes our previous experiences, our memories (real and false) that leave traces on our present. As we exist in the lifeworld our new experiences are pressured and influenced by our lived time. We exist in a perpetual state of becoming so our past is forever changing as we exist.

Lived human relation or relationality is the other through which we seek understanding of our self. All our experiences happen within a context, and that context shapes the experiences we have. It is the lived relation we maintain with others, both physical and abstract that shapes the experiences we have. This includes the interpersonal space that we share with others within the lifeworld - our lived world in which have our experiences.

The four existentials of lived space; lived body; lived time; and lived human relation can be differentiated from each other. But they can never be separated from each other. Our sense of self - our being of being - is constituent of all for parts. We exist bodily in time, in space, and not in isolation - we have experiences in interconnected situated moments. It is these existentials that inform our behaviour and can be calibrated to alter our future approaches to experiences.

There are two forms of experience. An anaesthetic experience is where we are on automatic pilot performing tasks with little focus on action or purpose is automatic. Alternatively, an autotelic experience is an experience that in itself is purposeful which leads to, from a pragmatist philosophical position as John Dewey suggests, aesthetic experiences. These aesthetic experiences are purposefully enjoyable in their interaction - with a beginning, middle and a culmination that is enjoyable.

John Dewey and Richard Shusterman suggests a pragmatic philosophical framework on how aesthetic experiences are structured. It is through the work on Flow by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentimihalyi [pronounced Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high]that provides a phenomenology of enjoyment. His eight components are all (or mostly) present in a particular aesthetic experience. In these phenomenological components the four existentials are present. This provides me as a Visual Communication researcher the rich abstracted concepts to visually develop the discipline further toward the aesthetics of use.

#1 Chance of completing
The sense of enjoyment appears to sit at an interface between boredom and anxiety. To enjoy an activity there appears a need for the tension between boredom and anxiety in completing it. Based upon an individual’s existing skills if the activity is too easy they will become bored quickly; too difficult they will feel anxious about not completing it. Enjoyment emerges out of an aesthetic experience where that tension is exciting, and the completion is possible with an application of the self in its achievement.

#2 Concentration on actions
When in a moment, that can be described as FLOW or an aesthetic experience, all other aspects of our life can be forgotten for a time. This is a by-product of being where enjoyable activities command a complete focusing on that moments actions. The clearly structured demands of the experience impose a sense of order in our consciousness. This in turn excludes any interference of our everyday worries and responsibilities - for a time.

#3 clear goals
Clear goals are not superficial and simple, nor are they always preformed. Clear goals of open-ended activities emerge out of ambiguities. The open-endedness of creative situations begin with vague goals that are subsequently fleshed out during the activity in a sense of exploration. Without clear goals to aim for the experience is unstructured and will meander. With even initial vague goals feedback will inform of when they have been met.

#4 immediate feedback
The kind of feedback that is worked toward is valid in its symbolic message it contains. It informs us of our level of success in achieving our goals. It creates order in consciousness and strengthens the structure of the self. The feedback required by the individual is variable. The key is that as long as the feedback is logically related to our goal, any feedback can become enjoyable - even feedback that isn’t positive.

#5 effortless involvement
Once in an enjoyable experience the desire and purpose is not to peak and to come out of the Flow of the experience - to return to a conscious self. A state of effortless involvement is enacted but this not all that it feels. To feel that, on reflection, the involvement has been effortless does still involve skilled performance. A lapse in concentration returns the individual to a state of self-consciousness, and self-evaluation - the state of Flow is interrupted.

#6 sense of control over self
Enjoyment in leisure activities is distinct from mundane everyday activities where any bad things can happen. Within an autotelic experience where the end is itself rewarding, the enjoyment is consuming without anxiety of failure. There is a paradox here as there is a sense of control over the self - or a lack of worry of about losing control that we do not have in our everyday existence.

#7 concern for self disappears
The loss of self-consciousness and concern for their self during an experience, is due to little opportunity for the self to feel threatened. Enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules and the challenge within the skills of the individual. Comfort zones can thus be pushed where the challenge is enjoyable. The loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self or of consciousness - but just a loss of consciousness of the self.

#8 Sense of time is altered
The freedom from the tyranny of objective time when in a state of complete involvement is exhilarating. The intense concentration an individual finds themselves in when absorbed in an enjoyable experience. Timing may still be objectively the same, but the sensation of passing of time is altered. It may be perceived as speeding up or slowing down despite pacing of actions or goals.

Here I’ll end as my time has passed and my pacing may be spot on or not. This has been an overview of the richness of pursuing the four existentials to understand the aesthetics of use."

Visual Communication and Performance

Jorge Frascara in his excellent book Communication Design argues for a fresh look on the function of Graphic Design. By looking at graphic designs, like illustration, as outcomes of Visual Communication, it makes it easier to escape the accusation that Graphic Design is just artifice.

Graphic designers, notes HCI expert Bruce Tognazzini, are limited to the interface’s ‘surface’ - how it looks and the design strategy behind communicating the content structure (2003). Gillian Crampton Smith, former school director of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, sees graphic designers’ role as more involved in the interactive design process “designing what a package is and what it does, and then designing what it will be like” (Aymer, 2001). Crampton Smith, a former graphic designer within software development is well placed to acknowledge the role graphic designers can and do play in interface design. The visual language of interaction design is built upon design axioms inherited from graphic design, learnt over decades of designing for print.

Unfortunately there are misconceptions held by many professionals outside the discipline as to what a graphic designer does. They have been perceived as “decorationists, elitists or servants of the consumerist machine” (Laurel, 2003) and their work as “frivolous or shallow” (O'Reilly, 2004). Over the last century graphic design is so “deeply ingrained in the texture of daily life that it is taken for granted” (Crowley, (2004). It has become pervasive and transparent. Yet graphic design is actually serving its purpose - visually communicating a message or visually structuring the functions of an interface. In the next section I will be examining this issue.

Interaction design expert Brenda Laurel reflects that labels such as ‘dictators of style’, decorationists, elitists, ‘servants of the consumerist machine’ were unfair misconceptions of graphic designers’ profession, marginalizing their contributions despite the pervasiveness of them within society. Most of its practice is subjective, instinctive and implicit, alternating between the “consideration of objective information and intuitive leaps” (Frascara, 2006). Graphic design, when designed well, can “inspire a behavourial change” in its audiences (Forlizzi & Lebbon, 2006).

In Communication Design, Frascara develops this argument, strengthening the case for Visual Communication to be understood properly and not prejudicially. “Although some designs can become ornaments, historical documents or aesthetic paradigms – once they’ve accomplished their primary goal – visual communication design is not just about looks; it is fundamentally about performance.” (p12) He argues that a designer is designing an "an event, an act in which the public interacts with the design." This is an objective that makes it the "design of communicational situations" that impacts on "the knowledge, the attitudes, and the behaviour of people" (p13) and this happens after the communication has happened. The communicational event that is the design happens over time. The visual and aesthetic strength of the design are dimensions in which the communication is contained. This is how Visual Communication can now be seen, repositioned if you like, beyond the perceived 'aesthetics of surface' and into the 'aesthetics of use'.

Barnard in his book Graphic Design as Communication (2005) also comes to a similar conclusion that Visual Communication is about the performance of the communication. He writes, "the pleasure of the image, its entertainment value, is experienced at the same time as its persuasive function. Indeed, some would argue that the pleasure engendered is an integral part of its rhetorical power. Nor is it the case that an example of graphic design will perform only one of these functions. There can be no piece of graphic design that is only decorative, or only informative. It is the case that any and all examples of graphic design will perform more than one of these functions.” (pp16-17) The rhetorical nature of the work, its semiological transmission of a message is all there to shape the design's performance, and a primary conclusion of a behavioural change in the person receiving the design.

Sidenote: As Frascara discusses Visual Communication in the book I feel that the term used for the title causes confusion. Yes Graphic Design is about communication through the visual relationships of image/text, but the term Communication Design is a term that weakens this relationship.

References used:

AYMER, G. (2001) Norman Cooking. Create Online. 8. p38-40. BALDWIN, J. and ROBERTS, L. (2006). Visual Communication. London: AVA Publishing Ltd.

BARNARD, M. (2005) Graphic Design as Communication. Abingdon: Routledge.

FORLIZZI, J. and LEBBON, C. (2006). From Formalism to Social Significance in Communication Design. In: A. Bennett, (Ed.), Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 51-63.

FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.

FRASCARA, J. (2006). Graphic Design: Fine Art or Social Science. In: A. Bennett, (Ed.), Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 26-35.

LAUREL, B. Ed (2003). Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.

O’REILLY, J. (2004) Thinking with Images. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp216-231.

TOGNAZZINI, B. (2003) It's Time We Got Respect [online]. [Accessed 2nd January 2009]. Available from: http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html)

Instrumentality of Aesthetics

CREATE 10 SLIDE: Instrumentality of Aesthetics
Image Source: © sebastian tiplea http://creattica.com/photos/case-logic/27495

Visual Communication and the Aesthetics of Use

CREATE 10 SLIDE: Facilitating the Behavioural Change
Image Source: © DigitalRey http://creattica.com/skateboard/dynamix-skateboard-concepts/37645