surroundingsignifiers

Lacan articulated desire as the result of a constitutive split in the subject--a split that occurs at the level of linguistic acquisition and weaning. Bear with me on this. When an infant is being breastfed, we assume that his or her idea of the world is not separate from the self. To the infant, self, world, and mother (sustenance provider) are all the same. The infant’s entire sense of self is wrapped up in one-ness with the surrounding world. When the child grows old enough, he or she is weaned from the breast, at which point there is a traumatic realization that the mother is separate from the self, that there is a difference between self and world, and that the individual needs something from the world. It seems quite benign to us as adults, but Lacan saw this event as a universal trauma that solidifies the subject/object split.

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How to tell if you're in the Twilight Zone.

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If the mind tends toward pleasure-seeking activity, then how can reliving traumatic experiences, the opposite of pleasure, be in line with this view? By definition, trauma not only shifts the homeostatic balance, it completely shatters it. The ego essentially shuts down in the face of trauma, as the Real has broken through its defensive layer and presented itself unmediated.

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The Freudian unconscious is predicated on the idea that there is a gap between an individual's sense of self and the true self. Jacques Lacan, an interpreter of Freud, articulated this as the difference between reality and the Real: while the Real, similar to the unconscious, encompasses the true, unfiltered motivations and desires that are the root of subjectivity, reality is the ego’s construction of the Real. The ego interprets the Real and relies on defenses to help distort, displace, and repress certain material that might be damaging to the everyday functioning of the individual.

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This is the first part in an ongoing series looking at how psychoanalysis can inform user experience design. As much as movements like lean UX and user-centered design focus on user insight to inform design decisions, designers often ignore--either out of unfamiliarity or dismissal--unconscious processes of their end users. It's not an easy task, but I think extracting this type of insight can help inform a more robust user experience strategy.

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The interface is also a 'new dimension of the human condition.' Designers and users speak through the interface, but the interface also speaks through them. This idea is obvious in the designer who creates a system that is able to speak to users. But users must speak to other users through the context of the interface, in its language.

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As we move from traditional advertising to social marketing, there is a tendency to completely transition to one side rather than acquire benefits of both and form a new approach. Social marketing advocates are quick to abandon traditional advertising techniques in favor of these new social tactics. Semiotics can help solve this problem by introducing a sort of dialectical maneuver in which we realize pros and cons of traditional advertising, pros and cons of social marketing, and choose the best combination to solve core problems.

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An attempt to reconcile differences between Lean UX and Semiotic Engineering. These approaches come from very different philosophical roots, but there are similarities that can be exploited to create a more well-rounded view of user experience and interface design.

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I’ve been reading a lot lately about the intersection of user interface design and semiotics. While much has been written on the subject--some free and some behind outrageous academic paywalls--the subject is still new and hasn’t been examined with a high level of detail. That’s not to say those who have written on the subject have done poor work; rather, each field in itself is very complex, and they become much more complex when combined into a single field of study. 

So I’ve decided to write an essay on the topic. I did a lot of work on semiotics in college and never lost interest in the subject. More recently, I’ve been working in user experience strategy and thinking more about the role of the interface. It sounds a bit simple, but we still do not understand the symbolic, political, social, and interpersonal effects of introducing a screen into a person-person or person-object relationship. What does it mean to put something in between a subject and its object? More specifically, what does it mean to design such an experience?

In the essay, I want to argue that design is not only a purposeful manipulation of variables to create a particular outcome, but also that desire--specifically the designer’s desire--has a significant effect on the design process. Etymologically, “design” and “desire” share roots in “divinity,” and I’ll be looking at how the process of design involves creating a divine object via desire and inspiration (etymologically “breathing into”). 

I’m hoping to finish some by lat May or early June. I look forward to really digging in and hopefully sparking some good conversations on the topic.

I’ve also started a Meetup group for Digital Semiotics. Join in if you’re interested. 

The production of goods and services has certainly created a disconnect between experiencing the self as such and the self as mediated through representations. Person-person, person-object, and person-idea interactions are never what they seem. I mean that quite literally. We never experience unmediated interaction. It sounds a bit extreme, but what I mean is that given this mediation, there is always a middle ground between two opposites. So even in using the language of opposites (“always” and “never”), we can assert a non-binary way of thinking.

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Start the spring season with an epic bang! Join us for a half-day immersive workshop meant to teach-by-doing the Design Studio method. Whether your focus is strategy, product management, design, or development, this hands-on, dynamic workshop is for anyone involved in the ideation, design or development of websites, applications, and mobile experience.

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I was recently contacted by George Haines about whether I'd be interested in doing a quick email interview with him. George is an insrtuctional designer interested in the link between marketing and pedagogy from a semiotic perspective. He's interested in knowing more about how the process marketers go through to create memorable experiences, often on the conceptual level, and how it can be translated into an educational environment. In other words, how can teachers create a learning experience and system of meaning that makes more of an impression on students?

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But Google doesn’t care about you. They care about the aggregate of your online behavior in comparison to everyone else. Your data (notice that we always speak of it in ambiguous terms. what exactly is “data?”) is pulled in raw form and stored on a server somewhere as fodder to pattern recognition software. There is no Cartesian evil genius (Descartes was a textbook paranoiac) at Google HQ pulling strings and laughing maniacally as he pries into your deepest online secrets.

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I don't normally write about individual ads. Although I'm very interested in the semiology of visual advertising, we seem to have reached a point where the symbolism that was once "hidden" is now grotesquely open, unavoidable, and obvious. Nonetheless, I was flipping through the Spring 2012 issue of VMan and was struck by this sequence of three ads from different companies. They each play with notions of power/dominance, constraint, and expulsion is unique ways.

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The revolution that many socialist-leaning theorists advocate will not take place on the streets: it will be in the office buildings. Significant change in the current capitalist system will only happen when the perception of work is changed from obligation to specialization. When workers are able to identify their skills, determine their value, and sell that value back to their employers, we will finally see the full potential of hyper-connectivity on the work force.

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