From Semiotics to Choreography

What is it about?

In 1985 I completed a major research project in Semiotics which resulted in In Search of Semiotics and a paper in this Journal explaining the relationship between semiotics and information design, and how information designers might productively read semiotic research. Also in 1985, I started a program of research into information design at what became the Communication Research Institute (CRI). This paper is a reflection on that 30 years of work, taking my 1986 critique of semiotics and information design at that time as its starting point. The focus at CRI on user-centred design and the normalisation of user testing as part of information design practice over that period has taken my emphasis away from semiotics towards semiosis and a kind of pattern language akin to choreography. Instead of investigating a static syntax used by imagined readers, I began to investigate a dynamic pragmatics used by real people: repeated dance steps that could be transformed through design.

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