Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

A solely production-based account of design culture would not be sufficient to understand its
emergent complexity, and objects of design should be understood as interrelated dimensions of
interaction between information and values among designers, producers and users. Julier (2008)
criticizes the product semantics approach for relying too much on subjective definitions and
interpretations, thus ignoring the differentiating effects of social context and time on cognition of
concepts such as’ traditional, conventional or progressive’. The design culture approach offers to
deliver a more diverse understanding of socio-cultural aspects of design, and theorize design as a
cultural cycle of production, reproduction and interaction of information and values among realms
of design, production and consumption. On the other hand, Krippendorff’s semantic view also
proposes a multi-dimensional framework to understand design as psychological (use), sociolinguistic
(language), techno-economic (genesis) and ecological dimensions of human interaction.
Julier considers the role of designer as creating value; in fact, various types of values including
commercial, social, cultural, environmental, political and symbolic values are collectively created
by design cycle. In fact, the socio-cultural and ecological framing of design as human activity (i.e.
Kripendorff 1990, 1998, 2006) suggests that designing takes place in social, cultural and ecological
contexts of human existence in terms of both its contexts and consequences. While I borrow
particular ideas from Julier’s design culture approach, in my analysis I combine social semiotic
framing of contexts of multimodal communication, semiotic resources and their meaning
potentials with the product semantics approach. My analysis particularly focuses on (co-)designers’
interpretations of affordances and constraints, and the ways in which they use SL as a design tool
to co-produce meaningful communication environments.
Ill-defined nature of design problems and creative problem-solving
Designers often employ a distinctive type of problem-solving strategy, which is based on generating
and testing potential solutions, and modifying initial design principles to optimize the processes of
achieving goals. Design ability is therefore founded on the construction of “a reflective
conversation with the situation” (Cross 2007 [1990]: 37). However, designing is not simply
‘problem-solving’. In comparison to traditional forms of inductive and deductive inference in
scientific rationale, Cross (2007 [1982]) relates the constructive nature of design thinking to
abductive reasoning, which a result of a necessary critical thinking on ill-defined problems, and
logic of ‘making and thinking’. Cross contrasts design to the epistemological, ontological and
methodological traditions of sciences and humanities and locate it as a ‘third culture’, while
acknowledging that this ‘three cultures view’ is a limited but useful model to articulate unique
characteristics of design culture. For Cross, the third culture emphasizes what it means to be
designerly rather than scientific or artistic, and it could be better comprehended as a culture of
‘technology’. Technology is not simply ‘applied science’, but it is the application of scientific and
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