Studies in Organisational Semiotics: A Systematic Literature Review
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paper_title: Value Pie: A Culturally Informed Conceptual Scheme for Understanding Values in Design

paper_content:

Interactive technologies have spread from the context of the workplace to our homes and everyday lives, and people use them for different purposes, through different devices, and in quite different and complex contexts. In the last years, the HCI research community has devoting attention to the subject of values, pointing out to the need for placing values in the core of technology design, and for studies that support researchers, designers and practitioners in doing so. In this paper, we introduce the Value Pie: a theoretically grounded artifact created to support the understanding and involvement of values in design. The paper presents the grounds used to create the artifact and discusses on how it can favor a comprehensive and informed understanding of values and their cultural context.
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paper_title: Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering

paper_content:

1. Introduction Part I. Semiotic Framework and Methods: 2. Understanding semiotics 3. A semiotic framework for information systems 4. A semiotic approach to information systems development 5. Knowledge representation and information analysis 6. Semantic analysis 7. Pragmatics and communication 8. The social layer: modelling organisations as information systems Part II. Applications: 9. From semiotic analysis to systems design 10. Semantic temporal databases 11. Normbase: a new approach to information management 12. Case study: development of a land resources information system 13. Case study: development of a test construction system Appendix A. Semantic templates and surrogate specification Appendix B. LEGOL applications in the CRIS case References Index.
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paper_title: A systematic literature review of semiotics perception in user interfaces

paper_content:

Purpose – The underlying objective of this literature review was to investigate what kinds of semiotics researches have been employed in user interfaces design and usability evaluation, and how were they employed.Design/methodology/approach – This research follows a systematic literature review process that consists of three key stages: planning the review, conducting the review, and reporting the review. Starting with an initial set of about 1,000 research articles, 65 were selected for this review, using an inclusion and exclusion criteria. Qualitative and quantitative data were extracted from the selected literatures following a data extraction strategy in six themes of data extraction. The extracted data were synthesized to formulate the stated research questions to obtain the review goals.Findings – This systematic review identified research strengths, gaps, and challenges. Apart from this, further research possibilities were also explored in this review. For research, the review showed clear needs f...
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paper_title: Accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities: a systematic search and review of empirical evidence

paper_content:

The purpose of this study was to identify and synthesize measures for accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities by seeking answers to the following research questions: What measures to make electronic communication accessible to people with cognitive disabilities are evaluated and reported in the scientific literature? What documented effects do these measures have? Empirical studies describing and assessing cognitive accessibility measures were identified by searches of 13 databases. Data were extracted and methodological quality was assessed. Findings were analyzed and recommendations for practice and research were made. Twenty-nine articles with considerable variations in studied accessibility measures, diagnoses, methods, outcome measures, and quality were included. They address the use of Internet, e-mail, telephone, chat, television, multimedia interfaces, texts and pictures, operation of equipment, and entering of information. Although thin, the current evidence base indicates that the accessibility needs, requirements, and preferences of people with cognitive disabilities are diverse. This ought to be reflected in accessibility guidelines and standards. Studies to systematically develop and recommend effective accessibility measures are needed to address current knowledge gaps.
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paper_title: Introducing New Technology in Educational Contexts: Schools as Organizations

paper_content:

The school context offers many opportunities to explore the use of digital technologies. When designing for schools, systems designers usually tend to consider only the students or, at most, teachers and students. However, schools are complex social organizations that are composed by many other interested parties. When aiming at solutions that make sense to the users, the entire school, as an organization, should be considered. This paper, presents the activities we conducted at an elementary public school in Brazil, facing the challenge of constructing meaning for a new digital artifact. For the analysis of organization and context we used adapted practices from Organizational Semiotics (OS) and Participatory Design (PD). Our results suggest that both OS and PD are suitable for educational projects and they can anticipate problems and propose solutions for prospective use of technology in such contexts.
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paper_title: Designing tailorable software systems with the users’ participation

paper_content:

There are several barriers that prevent Brazilian citizen to access knowledge, including the way in which computational technology is presented considering the diversity of interaction skills in our population. One approach for suiting the diverse and mutable interaction requirements is to tailor interfaces according to the users’ preferences or needs. Although literature regarding tailoring presents results with diverse foci, there has been a lack of works considering methods and techniques to support designers in their practice. This paper presents a practical approach to elicit and formalize the tailorable behavior making interactive systems more flexible. The elicitation of the different possible interfaces is performed with users’ participation and the tailorable behavior is formalized with a norm-based structure. A case study, in the context of an inclusive social network system, is described as well as the evaluation with final users.
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paper_title: The social considerations for moving health services into the home: A telecare perspective

paper_content:

Benefits of telecare have been lower than expected partly because of the social aspects in homes. This paper examines how social aspects are dealt with in telecare design. The objective is to provide guidelines on how social aspects can be captured and applied when designing telecare. A pilot study was conducted in a telecare provider domain to determine how social aspects encountered were dealt with. Social constructivism is applied to capture the user preferences and organisational semiotics to provide structure to the social aspects. The research presents a norm based framework that involves the user in the design process. Validation results confirm that the framework is structurally stable and is implementable. Applying technology in homes offers challenges because of user preferences. Capturing these preferences and applying them at source raises the quality of care. The results of this study can be applied in introducing technology in other socially dominated environments.
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paper_title: Eliciting Accessibility Requirements for People with Hearing Loss: A Semantic and Norm Analysis

paper_content:

The barriers for people with hearing loss to access the Web go beyond the perceptual ones, i.e., the use of audio based content. Many people with hearing loss have difficulty writing and interpreting long or complex texts on the Web. In this study, we analyzed the semantic and normative aspects of Web content production and consumption by means of participatory studies with 29 deaf users. These studies resulted in the elicitation of 121 key problems, and the respective high level design recommendations. The recommendations aim to transform the Web into an inductor of learning. They also include design solutions that demand further research on assistive technologies.
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paper_title: A Pattern for Structuring the Information System Architecture -Introducing an EA Framework for Organizing Tasks

paper_content:

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an approach which aims to align IT and business strategy to help organizations invest wisely in IT and make the most of their current IT facilities. In fact, EA isa conceptual framework which defines the structure of an enterprise, its components and their relationships. It is considered to be a massive and also complicated job which if proper methods and approaches are not used, a huge amount of chaos and overheads will be caused. This paper aims to introduce a structure for organizing EA tasks. This structure provides guidelines on how to organize and document business services. Therefore, a more organized EA process will be carried out and both time and effort are saved. A case study is used to elaborate and explain the structure accompanied by the evaluation and discussion.
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paper_title: An Interaction Design Method to Support the Expression of User Intentions in Collaborative Systems

paper_content:

The communication and interpretation of users’ intentions play a key role in collaborative web discussions. However, existing mechanisms fail to support the users’ expression of their intentions during collaborations. In this article, we propose an original interaction design method based on semiotics to guide the construction of interactive mechanisms, which allow users to explicitly express and share intentions. We apply the method in a case study in the context of collaborative forums for software developers. The obtained results reveal preliminary evidences regarding the effectiveness of the method for the definition of interface components, enabling more meaningful and successful communications.
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paper_title: Socio-Technical Barriers Induced by the Design of Emerging Technologies

paper_content:

Emerging technologies may impose barriers on groups of people or even the whole society. These barriers are of a socio-technical nature and impact the acceptance, adoption and use of technology. In this paper we investigate Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) as an example of such emerging technology. We identify and discuss socio-technical barriers that arise in the domain of iDTV. As our method, we present, analyze and discuss a study of iDTV application design situated in the real context of a Brazilian broadcasting company. News and documents from the Brazilian Digital TV Forum portal were used to understand external forces that act on Digital TV and the society. Our findings indicate that iDTV acceptance is negatively influenced by project decisions that do not consider socio-technical constraints, and also the beneficial of the “Socially Aware Computing” perspective to propose design solutions that make sense for stakeholders, including end users.
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paper_title: A semiotic based method for evaluating automated cockpit interfaces

paper_content:

Issues of Human-Machine Interaction in the aircraft's cockpit are well known as causes of events that collaborate with material and human losses. In this scenario, the design and evaluation of interfaces must follow rigorous methods. The objective of this work is to develop an evaluation method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within the cockpit in order to reduce erroneous actions. This method is based on theories and techniques from the Organizational Semiotics (OS) field. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated in a case study in an aeronautical simulated scenario with the participation of three pilots. The intention is contribute to the advancement of knowledge in HCI cockpit environment, particularly in the understanding of human factors related to semantic, pragmatics and the situational awareness aspects of the interaction with computing devices, as well as creates a feasible method to evaluate these factors during the execution of the mission' tasks.
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paper_title: A value-oriented and culturally informed approach to the design of interactive systems

paper_content:

Cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns influence the way technology is understood and used, and the impact it may cause on the environment and on people. Although there is influential literature devoted to the subject of values and culture in Human-Computer Interaction, there is still a lack of principled and practical artifacts and methods to support researchers and practitioners in their activities. In this paper, we present a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Approach (VCIA) to sensitize and support Computer Science and Engineering professionals in taking values and culture into consideration throughout the design of interactive systems. The approach is grounded on theoretical and methodological bases of Organizational Semiotics, Building Blocks of Culture, and Socially Aware Computing. VCIA offers a set of artifacts and methods articulated to support the design process in its different stages and activities: from the identification of stakeholders and their values, to the organization of requirements and the evaluation of the designed solution. In this paper, we present VCIA's principles, artifacts, and illustrate its usefulness in bringing values into consideration, supporting a socially aware system design. Values and culture are approached in design in a joint, explicit and informed way.Theoretical and methodological basis from different areas are articulated.Introduction and explanation of informed artifacts created to support designers.Instantiation of a process for involving values and culture in design activities.Case study explains the process in action and shows its contributions.
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paper_title: Semiotics in Interoperation for Information Systems Working Collaboratively

paper_content:

The interoperability for information systems to work collaboratively has long been seen as a critical issue in achieving organisations’ objectives. However, the lack of scientific foundation and effective approach for interoperation has always been recognised by researchers and practitioners. There is very little published in the nature of information systems’ behaviour in interoperation. Organisational semiotics provides a theoretical foundation for systems interoperability. In this paper, we have synthesised current knowledge on interoperability paradigm which covers requirement articulation, knowledge foundation, analysis and measurement as well as artefact development to enhance systems interoperability. A notion of ‘semiotic interoperability’ is proposed in this paper as a paradigm, guiding systems interoperation and measuring degree of interoperability, covering aspects from physical properties, transmission structure of signs, placing emphasis on communicating meaning, intention to social consequence of information. Furthermore, a conceptual research framework on semiotics interoperability paradigm is proposed to guide further research in assessing, analysing, explaining and predicting as well as designing systems’ behaviour by covering broad semiotic issues of interoperability.
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paper_title: Incorporating Semiotics into Fuzzy Logic to Enhance Clinical Decision Support Systems

paper_content:

In order to enhance the quality of care, healthcare organisations are increasingly resorting to clinical decision support systems (CDSSs), which provide physicians with appropriate health care decisions or recommendations. However, how to explicitly represent the diverse vague medical knowledge and effectively reason in the decision-making process are still problems we are confronted. In this paper, we incorporate semiotics into fuzzy logic to enhance CDSSs with the aim of providing both the abilities of describing medical domain concepts contextually and reasoning with vague knowledge. A semiotically inspired fuzzy CDSSs framework is presented, based on which the vague knowledge representation and reasoning process are demonstrated.
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paper_title: Evaluation Frameworks for Information Systems Integration: From a Semiotic Lens

paper_content:

Information systems integration aims at the interaction, information exchange and interoperability between information systems, devices and units. Research efforts have contributed in evaluation of information systems integration on the development of evaluation frameworks. To improve the usability and measurability of evaluation, a review of existing evaluation frameworks including their evolution and classifications of different interoperability levels is conducted. The theory of organisational semiotics is used for a comparative analysis of the frameworks and future work.
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paper_title: Designing to Promote a New Social Affordance for Energy Consumption

paper_content:

The relation between energy consumption and its environmental impact is weak or even almost inexistent in the Brazilian scenario due to sociocultural reasons. This work takes advantage of an experimental smart grid deployment scenario to propose the concept of Social Eco-feedback Technology. It aims at establishing this relation by promoting a new social affordance (behavior pattern), favoring a new way of perceiving energy. The concept of affordance and artifacts of the Organizational Semiotics are extended to encompass both the analysis of actual and intended behavior through a new technology design.
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paper_title: Analyzing barriers for people with hearing loss on the web: a semiotic study

paper_content:

The correct interpretation of Web content by users is a major condition for an effective and accessible Web. However, many people with hearing loss have difficulties interpreting long and complex texts. In this work, we investigated barriers in the usage of Web systems by users with hearing loss. A participatory study with 21 users with hearing loss was conducted in the city of Macapa in Brazil. All the participants use internet frequently, but have different profiles, and reading and writing skill levels. Artifacts and methods from Organizational Semiotics were employed in the elicitation and analysis of problems, barriers, as well as solutions with the participants. The results provide alternatives that range from simple design directives to solutions that demand further research.
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paper_title: Values and Cultural Aspects in Design: Artifacts for Making Them Explicit in Design Activities

paper_content:

Values and cultural aspects must be considered for providing design solutions that make sense to people. Although there is influential literature work devoted to the subject of values and culture in design, there is still a lack of principled and light-weighted artifacts and methods to support designers in this task. In this paper we propose two artifacts for supporting designers in making explicit both stakeholders’ values and system’s requirements in design. We situate our discussion in a case study where the artifacts were used to support the design of seven prototypes of applications for Interactive Digital Television in the Brazilian context. The results were promising and indicated the artifacts’ usefulness to support designers in dealing with values and cultural aspects in design activities.
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paper_title: Virtual Process Modelling Informed by Organisational Semiotics: A Case of Higher Education Admission

paper_content:

The purpose of this study is to explore virtual process modelling based on organisational semiotics and WebML. The Internet and the Web afford opportunities to virtualize physical processes. Research on process virtualization has so far focused on theorizing or testing which activities can or cannot be virtualized. However, studies on virtual process modelling remains limited. This study therefore uses a university’s admission process as a case to explore virtual process modelling in a higher education environment.
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paper_title: Addressing universal access in social networks: an inclusive search mechanism

paper_content:

Social network services (SNSs) have brought new possibilities and challenges to the design of software environments that respect people's cultural differences. These systems may represent an opportunity for social and digital inclusion. However, search mechanisms in these systems impose serious barriers for people in the process of acquiring digital literacy. One of the barriers is the difficulty of using the adequate terms/keywords to perform content searches. This paper presents an approach to allow ordinary, non-technology proficient people to access the content of a network through the use of search parameters that make sense to them. The proposal is grounded on Semantic Web technologies (Web ontology) combined with Organizational Semiotics concepts and methods to identify the users' profile and language. A case study was conducted with the search mechanism integrated into a SNS, and a preliminary evaluation reveals the advantages and drawbacks of the approach.
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paper_title: Value Pie: A Culturally Informed Conceptual Scheme for Understanding Values in Design

paper_content:

Interactive technologies have spread from the context of the workplace to our homes and everyday lives, and people use them for different purposes, through different devices, and in quite different and complex contexts. In the last years, the HCI research community has devoting attention to the subject of values, pointing out to the need for placing values in the core of technology design, and for studies that support researchers, designers and practitioners in doing so. In this paper, we introduce the Value Pie: a theoretically grounded artifact created to support the understanding and involvement of values in design. The paper presents the grounds used to create the artifact and discusses on how it can favor a comprehensive and informed understanding of values and their cultural context.
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paper_title: Emerging manufacturing paradigm shifts for the incoming industrial revolution

paper_content:

Industrial revolutions have transformed manufacturing to mass production. However, there is a controversy about what production paradigm is emerging along with the incoming new industrial revolution. Most focus is either on smart manufacturing or 3D printing (additive manufacturing). This study converges smart manufacturing and additive manufacturing to form the long tail of making things as a paradigm shift for the new industrial revolution, which results in an ideal production system with the advantages of both economies of scale and scope. With the introduction of social aspects, socio-cyber-physical system (SCPS)-based manufacturing is proposed from the organizational semiotic perspective and exemplified by the four pillars of Future Internet. Furthermore, an extended version of the long tail is formed by the two modes of SCPS-based manufacturing: wisdom manufacturing and social manufacturing, which reviewed as the logical extension of smart manufacturing and additive manufacturing, respectively. Finally, a general interoperability model for SCPS-based manufacturing is suggested, which can also be applied to other integrated manufacturing systems.
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paper_title: Virtual Process Control Modelling in Organisational Semiotics: A Case of Higher Education Admission

paper_content:

This study explores Web-based virtual process control modelling based on organisational semiotics, Web modelling language (WebML), and higher education admission process. Despite some discussions on control activities in the organisational semiotics literature, less attention has been paid to process control modelling in general and Web-based virtual processes in particular. Process controls help to implement required organisational constraints as regulatory norms that enforce established rules, procedures, and standards for meeting intended organisational goals. This study contributes to organisational semiotics research by extending the discourse on control norms to the realm of Web-based virtual process modelling in a real life situation.
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paper_title: Assessing Pragmatic Interoperability for Process Alignment in Collaborative Working Environment

paper_content:

This paper is an extension of our previous study on pragmatic interoperability assessment for process alignment. In this study, we conduct four case studies in industrial companies and hospitals in order to gather their viewpoints regarding the concerns when condensing process alignment in a collaborative working environment. Used techniques include interview, observation, and documentation. The collected results firstly are summarised into three layers based on our previous developed pragmatic assessment model, and then are transformed into the elements which constitutes the purposed method, and finally based on the summarised results we purpose a method for assessing pragmatic interoperability for process alignment in collaborative working environment. The method contains two parts: one gives all the elements of pragmatic interoperability that should be concerned when considering process alignment in collaborative working environment, and the other one is a supplementary method for dealing with technical concerns.
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paper_title: Clarifying the Situational Context of a TV Company towards the Design of iDTV Applications

paper_content:

Television has experienced transformations that directly impact the TV companies’ production chain. In this sense, digital technology and Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) represent business opportunities in terms of investment spent by broadcasters. In this paper, we investigate the impact an iDTV application might have within a TV company by analyzing a situated context. To clarify the problem, we use the knowledge produced from workshops that were based on the Socially Aware Computing approach and that involved various stakeholders to design an iDTV application in a real context. The analysis is illustrated with the graphical representation of Ontology Charts and Norms projected for the observed organization. The findings indicate organizational changes that both suffer from and cause impact on the design of this kind of application.
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paper_title: Creating an iDTV Application from Inside a TV Company: A Situated and Participatory Approach

paper_content:

TV is a highly social and massive media that is worldwide available. The Interactive Digital TV represents a new device that is still constructing its identity. Designing applications for it is a challenging task, partially because of its intrinsic complex context and the lack of theoretical and methodological referential to support design activities. In this paper, we argue for a Socially Aware Computing approach to the design of iDTV applications, articulating artifacts and methods from Organizational Semiotics and Participatory Design. A case study on requirements for the design of an iDTV application is situated in the practical context of a Brazilian broadcasting TV Company. The results show benefits of using informed artifacts and methods in participatory and situated practices, indicating that it is possible and viable to make socially aware design in industrial settings.
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paper_title: On the Relationships between Norms, Values and Culture: Preliminary Thoughts in HCI

paper_content:

Different studies and initiatives have indicated a new moment in the Human-Computer Interaction field that requires it to consider aspects that are difficult to be identified, such as values and culture. However, these aspects have been traditionally left on the margin of approaches for technology development, and still demand investigations on how to effectively deal with them in design activities. In this paper, we consider the concept of Norms as a promising concept to advance the understanding and knowledge on this topic, and draw on a socially aware perspective to the design of information systems, presenting preliminary discussions on the concepts of norms, values and culture, and their possible relationships, as a first step into a norm-oriented perspective or values and culture in HCI.
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paper_title: Knowledge elicitation and representation in a normative approach-a case study in diagnosis of plant diseases in Egypt

paper_content:

Knowledge becomes a pivotal factor for intelligence to support decision making. Elicitation, representation and use of knowledge are major areas of research in the field of Artificial Intelligence, leading to development of knowledge bases and expert systems. Knowledge base system (KBS) development is complex, expensive, and time consuming process that needs to be applied in an organized manner. There are powerful tools for eliciting and representing KBSs. Using these tools becomes a very difficult task for users without specific knowledge in Artificial Intelligence. The aim of our research is to use a normative approach to elicit and represent the knowledge. To achieve this we build an elicitation and representation tool NormEST which allows the domain experts and the non-technical users are able to build their own KBSs. NormEST can be considering as a new approach in eliciting and representing the knowledge. NormEST is designed based on the concepts of Organisational Semiotics and evaluated by group of agriculture domain experts, the Delphi technique used as evaluation method to illustrate the top 10 ranked benefits of using NormEST. NormEST is demonstrated using a case study in fungal diseases in cucumber in Egypt. The results indicate that the NormEST is able to facilitate effective elicitation of parameters needed for an agriculture diagnostic experts system.
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paper_title: Prospecting an Inclusive Search Mechanism for Social Network Services

paper_content:

Inclusive Social Network Services (ISN) represent an opportunity for ordinary people to access information and knowledge through the Web. Such systems should provide access for all, creating situations where users’ diversity is respected and the access difficulties are minimized. The use of search mechanisms has been the main way to find information in the Web. However, such mechanisms are still built through lexical-syntactical processing resulting in barriers for many users to reach correct and valuable information. In ISN all people must have the possibility of recovering information that makes sense to them. For that, search engines in ISN should take into account the meanings created, shared and used by people through the use of the system. In this paper we prospect an inclusive search mechanism for ISN grounded in Semantic Web technologies combined with Organizational Semiotics concepts and methods. The conception of the proposed solution is based on experimental results that point out how to improve search mechanisms considering aspects related to social and digital inclusion. Such proposal aims to address and promote the participatory and universal access to knowledge.
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paper_title: Beyond the social search: personalizing the semantic search in social networks

paper_content:

Nowadays search mechanisms are decisive to people successfully access relevant and valuable information. In the current Web environment, people connected to each other through Social Network Services (SNSs) bring new challenges for search approaches. Recent literature in the SNS field shows expressive evolution but the approaches for searching still utilize mechanisms that just consider the syntactical processing of the information. Based on sociocultural aspects of a SNS, we propose a novel approach that enables to provide personalized semantic search. This approach makes use of ontologies to represent the shared meanings, and consequently to present better organized, ranked and adapted search results for each SNS user. The paper presents the way the proposed mechanism was implemented and points out examples that illustrate the possibilities raised by the approach.
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paper_title: Assessing Pragmatic Interoperability of Information Systems from a Semiotic Perspective

paper_content:

Most of studies on interoperability of systems integration focus on technical and semantic levels, but hardly extend investigations on pragmatic level. Our past work has addressed pragmatic interoperability, which is concerned with the relationship between signs and the potential behaviour and intention of responsible agents. We also define the pragmatic interoperability as a level concerning with the aggregation and optimisation of various business processes for achieving intended purposes of different information systems. This paper, as the extension of our previous research, is to propose an assessment method for measuring pragmatic interoperability of information systems. We firstly propose interoperability analysis framework, which is based on the concept of semiosis. We then develop pragmatic interoperability assessment process from two dimensions including six aspects (informal, formal, technical, substantive, communication, and control). We finally illustrate the assessment process in an example.
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paper_title: Seeing Social Software Analysis and Evaluation through the Lenses of Culture

paper_content:

Social software is a growing reality worldwide, while the analysis and evaluation of this kind of system still is a quite unexplored challenge. The complex scenario of social software has been marked by the diversity of users, their limitations, preferences, cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, customs and so on. This paper sheds light on this scenario proposing a culturally aware artifact to support designers in the task of analyzing and evaluating social software, taking values and other cultural issues into account in an explicit way. The artifact, named VF4SS, was used by a group of designers to evaluate five different prototypes of systems for supporting cross-cultural collaboration. The results obtained from this activity demonstrate that the artifact can bring effective contributions to the evaluation as well as to the design of social software.
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paper_title: Applying Organizational Semiotics for Developing Knowledge-Based Cost Estimation of Construction Project

paper_content:

Cost estimation is a dynamic and knowledge intensive process. Current practice of construction cost estimation is a process with fragmented knowledge. In order to have an integrated process, semantic should be modelled in respect to pragmatic. The investigation of BIM-based cost estimation confirmed that IFC can provide construction project semantics but incapable of relating domain semantics and pragmatics. In order to overcome this gap, we adopt organizational semiotics to fully reveal semantic units of cost estimation from a process perspective. Pilot study confirms feasibility of this approach. Future research will be a case study to collect all the instances for semantic units. Then semantic consistency and pragmatic implementation should be realized by the applications. This research highlights the importance of alignment between semantic (domain ontology) and pragmatic (meaning in use), it contributes also to identify a new approach of knowledge engineering for construction professional services under BIM environment.
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paper_title: Semiotics-Oriented Method for Generation of Clinical Pathways

paper_content:

Large numbers of people continue to be successfully cared for and treated in the National Health Service, but a significant number of errors and other forms of harm occur. These errors are mainly a result of human error or occur in consequence of poor process, procedure and control design. In this paper, we present a semiotic approach to generating clinical pathways by capturing knowledge from syntactic level to social level and guiding the modelling of clinical pathways using Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) best practice to visualise the process. This will result in more rigorous control and visibility of the care process ensuring completeness, consistency and patient safety by enabling the mapping of formal and informal/safety controls into clinical pathways.
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paper_title: Designing tailorable software systems with the users’ participation

paper_content:

There are several barriers that prevent Brazilian citizen to access knowledge, including the way in which computational technology is presented considering the diversity of interaction skills in our population. One approach for suiting the diverse and mutable interaction requirements is to tailor interfaces according to the users’ preferences or needs. Although literature regarding tailoring presents results with diverse foci, there has been a lack of works considering methods and techniques to support designers in their practice. This paper presents a practical approach to elicit and formalize the tailorable behavior making interactive systems more flexible. The elicitation of the different possible interfaces is performed with users’ participation and the tailorable behavior is formalized with a norm-based structure. A case study, in the context of an inclusive social network system, is described as well as the evaluation with final users.
---
paper_title: The social considerations for moving health services into the home: A telecare perspective

paper_content:

Benefits of telecare have been lower than expected partly because of the social aspects in homes. This paper examines how social aspects are dealt with in telecare design. The objective is to provide guidelines on how social aspects can be captured and applied when designing telecare. A pilot study was conducted in a telecare provider domain to determine how social aspects encountered were dealt with. Social constructivism is applied to capture the user preferences and organisational semiotics to provide structure to the social aspects. The research presents a norm based framework that involves the user in the design process. Validation results confirm that the framework is structurally stable and is implementable. Applying technology in homes offers challenges because of user preferences. Capturing these preferences and applying them at source raises the quality of care. The results of this study can be applied in introducing technology in other socially dominated environments.
---
paper_title: Eliciting Accessibility Requirements for People with Hearing Loss: A Semantic and Norm Analysis

paper_content:

The barriers for people with hearing loss to access the Web go beyond the perceptual ones, i.e., the use of audio based content. Many people with hearing loss have difficulty writing and interpreting long or complex texts on the Web. In this study, we analyzed the semantic and normative aspects of Web content production and consumption by means of participatory studies with 29 deaf users. These studies resulted in the elicitation of 121 key problems, and the respective high level design recommendations. The recommendations aim to transform the Web into an inductor of learning. They also include design solutions that demand further research on assistive technologies.
---
paper_title: A semiotic based method for evaluating automated cockpit interfaces

paper_content:

Issues of Human-Machine Interaction in the aircraft's cockpit are well known as causes of events that collaborate with material and human losses. In this scenario, the design and evaluation of interfaces must follow rigorous methods. The objective of this work is to develop an evaluation method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within the cockpit in order to reduce erroneous actions. This method is based on theories and techniques from the Organizational Semiotics (OS) field. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated in a case study in an aeronautical simulated scenario with the participation of three pilots. The intention is contribute to the advancement of knowledge in HCI cockpit environment, particularly in the understanding of human factors related to semantic, pragmatics and the situational awareness aspects of the interaction with computing devices, as well as creates a feasible method to evaluate these factors during the execution of the mission' tasks.
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paper_title: A design of business-technology alignment consulting framework

paper_content:

Current work on applying scientific methods to capture the cultural values as requirements for business-IT alignment has been scarce, even though organisations acknowledge its significant impact. This paper introduces a Business-Technology Alignment Consulting Framework that adopts an Organisational Semiotics approach to capture cultural values from both formal norms and informal hidden social norms that can significantly impact the actual vs perceived alignment. A set of techniques in the framework are described for its use in conducting consulting analysis. Business Service Analysis is the core analysis that provides the holistic structure of the business services. Business Service Valuation calculates the service cultural values to complement the Business Service Analysis. Business Service Norms Analysis captures the business norms that govern the business service. A case study example is used to illustrate the analysis templates to holistically represent the business services. The significance of the consulting framework and future work are also discussed.
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paper_title: Designing to Promote a New Social Affordance for Energy Consumption

paper_content:

The relation between energy consumption and its environmental impact is weak or even almost inexistent in the Brazilian scenario due to sociocultural reasons. This work takes advantage of an experimental smart grid deployment scenario to propose the concept of Social Eco-feedback Technology. It aims at establishing this relation by promoting a new social affordance (behavior pattern), favoring a new way of perceiving energy. The concept of affordance and artifacts of the Organizational Semiotics are extended to encompass both the analysis of actual and intended behavior through a new technology design.
---
paper_title: Virtual Process Modelling Informed by Organisational Semiotics: A Case of Higher Education Admission

paper_content:

The purpose of this study is to explore virtual process modelling based on organisational semiotics and WebML. The Internet and the Web afford opportunities to virtualize physical processes. Research on process virtualization has so far focused on theorizing or testing which activities can or cannot be virtualized. However, studies on virtual process modelling remains limited. This study therefore uses a university’s admission process as a case to explore virtual process modelling in a higher education environment.
---
paper_title: Virtual Process Control Modelling in Organisational Semiotics: A Case of Higher Education Admission

paper_content:

This study explores Web-based virtual process control modelling based on organisational semiotics, Web modelling language (WebML), and higher education admission process. Despite some discussions on control activities in the organisational semiotics literature, less attention has been paid to process control modelling in general and Web-based virtual processes in particular. Process controls help to implement required organisational constraints as regulatory norms that enforce established rules, procedures, and standards for meeting intended organisational goals. This study contributes to organisational semiotics research by extending the discourse on control norms to the realm of Web-based virtual process modelling in a real life situation.
---
paper_title: Clarifying the Situational Context of a TV Company towards the Design of iDTV Applications

paper_content:

Television has experienced transformations that directly impact the TV companies’ production chain. In this sense, digital technology and Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) represent business opportunities in terms of investment spent by broadcasters. In this paper, we investigate the impact an iDTV application might have within a TV company by analyzing a situated context. To clarify the problem, we use the knowledge produced from workshops that were based on the Socially Aware Computing approach and that involved various stakeholders to design an iDTV application in a real context. The analysis is illustrated with the graphical representation of Ontology Charts and Norms projected for the observed organization. The findings indicate organizational changes that both suffer from and cause impact on the design of this kind of application.
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paper_title: Applying Organizational Semiotics for Developing Knowledge-Based Cost Estimation of Construction Project

paper_content:

Cost estimation is a dynamic and knowledge intensive process. Current practice of construction cost estimation is a process with fragmented knowledge. In order to have an integrated process, semantic should be modelled in respect to pragmatic. The investigation of BIM-based cost estimation confirmed that IFC can provide construction project semantics but incapable of relating domain semantics and pragmatics. In order to overcome this gap, we adopt organizational semiotics to fully reveal semantic units of cost estimation from a process perspective. Pilot study confirms feasibility of this approach. Future research will be a case study to collect all the instances for semantic units. Then semantic consistency and pragmatic implementation should be realized by the applications. This research highlights the importance of alignment between semantic (domain ontology) and pragmatic (meaning in use), it contributes also to identify a new approach of knowledge engineering for construction professional services under BIM environment.
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paper_title: Semiotics-Oriented Method for Generation of Clinical Pathways

paper_content:

Large numbers of people continue to be successfully cared for and treated in the National Health Service, but a significant number of errors and other forms of harm occur. These errors are mainly a result of human error or occur in consequence of poor process, procedure and control design. In this paper, we present a semiotic approach to generating clinical pathways by capturing knowledge from syntactic level to social level and guiding the modelling of clinical pathways using Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) best practice to visualise the process. This will result in more rigorous control and visibility of the care process ensuring completeness, consistency and patient safety by enabling the mapping of formal and informal/safety controls into clinical pathways.
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paper_title: Designing tailorable software systems with the users’ participation

paper_content:

There are several barriers that prevent Brazilian citizen to access knowledge, including the way in which computational technology is presented considering the diversity of interaction skills in our population. One approach for suiting the diverse and mutable interaction requirements is to tailor interfaces according to the users’ preferences or needs. Although literature regarding tailoring presents results with diverse foci, there has been a lack of works considering methods and techniques to support designers in their practice. This paper presents a practical approach to elicit and formalize the tailorable behavior making interactive systems more flexible. The elicitation of the different possible interfaces is performed with users’ participation and the tailorable behavior is formalized with a norm-based structure. A case study, in the context of an inclusive social network system, is described as well as the evaluation with final users.
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paper_title: A Pattern for Structuring the Information System Architecture -Introducing an EA Framework for Organizing Tasks

paper_content:

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an approach which aims to align IT and business strategy to help organizations invest wisely in IT and make the most of their current IT facilities. In fact, EA isa conceptual framework which defines the structure of an enterprise, its components and their relationships. It is considered to be a massive and also complicated job which if proper methods and approaches are not used, a huge amount of chaos and overheads will be caused. This paper aims to introduce a structure for organizing EA tasks. This structure provides guidelines on how to organize and document business services. Therefore, a more organized EA process will be carried out and both time and effort are saved. A case study is used to elaborate and explain the structure accompanied by the evaluation and discussion.
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paper_title: Designing iDTV applications from participatory use of patterns

paper_content:

Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) is an emerging technology in Brazil, with inherent characteristics that must be addressed and which demand technical resources and references to support the design and development of interactive applications. This paper presents a design activity that reports and discusses the use of specific design patterns combined with prototyping tools and techniques inspired by Participatory Design in the design of applications for iDTV. Results are presented and discussed focusing on: the advantages of using design patterns in a participatory design, the main difficulties the groups had during the design activities, the importance of tools to support the design of iDTV applications.
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paper_title: Information Systems and Sign Systems

paper_content:

The organisational world can be considered as a collective of social sign systems and formal sign systems (computer based information systems). In this paper the issue of the fundamental differences between the two kinds of sign systems will be discussed, and the implications of these fundamental differences for system development.
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paper_title: Designing an IDTV Application in a Situated Scenario: A Participatory Approach Based on Patterns

paper_content:

Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) applications suffer with problems that are inherent to the technology and their social aspects. In addition, theoretical and practical references for designing iDTV applications are not easily found. In this sense, designing for iDTV has become an increasingly complex activity. In this paper, we propose three participatory practices for supporting a situated design and evaluation of iDTV applications. The practices were articulated in a situated design process conducted inside a Brazilian TV company. The approach favored the participation of important stakeholders, supporting different design activities: from design ideas to the creation and evaluation of an interactive prototype. The results suggest the practices’ usefulness for supporting design activities, indicate the benefits of a situated and participatory approach for iDTV applications, and may inspire researchers and designers in other contexts.
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paper_title: A value-oriented and culturally informed approach to the design of interactive systems

paper_content:

Cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns influence the way technology is understood and used, and the impact it may cause on the environment and on people. Although there is influential literature devoted to the subject of values and culture in Human-Computer Interaction, there is still a lack of principled and practical artifacts and methods to support researchers and practitioners in their activities. In this paper, we present a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Approach (VCIA) to sensitize and support Computer Science and Engineering professionals in taking values and culture into consideration throughout the design of interactive systems. The approach is grounded on theoretical and methodological bases of Organizational Semiotics, Building Blocks of Culture, and Socially Aware Computing. VCIA offers a set of artifacts and methods articulated to support the design process in its different stages and activities: from the identification of stakeholders and their values, to the organization of requirements and the evaluation of the designed solution. In this paper, we present VCIA's principles, artifacts, and illustrate its usefulness in bringing values into consideration, supporting a socially aware system design. Values and culture are approached in design in a joint, explicit and informed way.Theoretical and methodological basis from different areas are articulated.Introduction and explanation of informed artifacts created to support designers.Instantiation of a process for involving values and culture in design activities.Case study explains the process in action and shows its contributions.
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paper_title: You Can Interact with Your TV and You May Like It an Investigation on Persuasive Aspects for an iDTV Application

paper_content:

Interactive Digital TV (iDTV) is a technology that has many challenges that surround it and that may discourage the passive viewers to interact with TV. To face the challenging scenario of designing for iDTV, we draw on the Social Aware Computing (SAC) approach to design, looking at the problem and proposing solutions on various abstraction levels (informal, formal and technical) according to the viewpoint of different stakeholders, including prospective end users. This paper presents a motivational analysis conducted through Analytical and Empirical evaluations and Questionnaires, to understand whether and how an iDTV application designed through the SAC motivates users to interact with it. As results, our analysis pointed out application features that are likely to motivate users to interact, and features that emerged during the design process and were reflected on the application prototype. Moreover, we discuss whether and how the SAC design process may support iDTV applications that make sense to users and motivate them to interact.
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paper_title: Analyzing barriers for people with hearing loss on the web: a semiotic study

paper_content:

The correct interpretation of Web content by users is a major condition for an effective and accessible Web. However, many people with hearing loss have difficulties interpreting long and complex texts. In this work, we investigated barriers in the usage of Web systems by users with hearing loss. A participatory study with 21 users with hearing loss was conducted in the city of Macapa in Brazil. All the participants use internet frequently, but have different profiles, and reading and writing skill levels. Artifacts and methods from Organizational Semiotics were employed in the elicitation and analysis of problems, barriers, as well as solutions with the participants. The results provide alternatives that range from simple design directives to solutions that demand further research.
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paper_title: Understanding Pragmatic Aspects with Social Values in Web-Mediated Collaborative Systems

paper_content:

Various aspects underlying collaborative discussions in web-mediated systems influence the interpretation of exchanged messages, which may prevent participants to better manage, retrieve and explore available content. In this article, we argue that pragmatics and social values play a key role in this scenario, influencing each other. We propose to articulate aspects of pragmatics and values, and conduct four empirical analyses in a real-world case study. We ground our analyses on concepts and methods of Organizational Semiotics. The paper presents an analysis of participants’ interaction, a communication analysis based on a framework of illocutions, and a discussion on the shared social values. Our results indicate possible interdependencies between social values and categories of illocutions.
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paper_title: Values and Cultural Aspects in Design: Artifacts for Making Them Explicit in Design Activities

paper_content:

Values and cultural aspects must be considered for providing design solutions that make sense to people. Although there is influential literature work devoted to the subject of values and culture in design, there is still a lack of principled and light-weighted artifacts and methods to support designers in this task. In this paper we propose two artifacts for supporting designers in making explicit both stakeholders’ values and system’s requirements in design. We situate our discussion in a case study where the artifacts were used to support the design of seven prototypes of applications for Interactive Digital Television in the Brazilian context. The results were promising and indicated the artifacts’ usefulness to support designers in dealing with values and cultural aspects in design activities.
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paper_title: Capturing Semiotic and Social Factors of Organizational Evolution

paper_content:

Enterprises are always subject to internal and external pressures for change. Organizational Semiotics explains the structure of social norms, which allows a group of people to act together in a coordinated way for certain purposes. When a novelty requires reshaping this structure, Actor-Network Theory provides sociological insights to understand the involved factors. This paper delineates a method combining these theoretical sources for clarifying and representing the social forces involved in organizational changes. All actors – people, technical devices and other objects – are modeled in the same social level, tracing the flow of interests back to their sources, enabling to negotiate changes with the appropriate stakeholders.
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paper_title: Changing building user attitude and organisational policy towards sustainable resource use in healthcare

paper_content:

Health care provision is significantly impacted by the ability of the health providers to engineer a viable healthcare space to support care stakeholders needs. In this paper we discuss and propose use of organisational semiotics as a set of methods to link stakeholders to systems, which allows us to capture clinician activity, information transfer, and building use; which in turn allows us to define the value of specific systems in the care environment to specific stakeholders and the dependence between systems in a care space. We suggest use of a semantically enhanced building information model (BIM) to support the linking of clinician activity to the physical resource objects and space; and facilitate the capture of quantifiable data, over time, concerning resource use by key stakeholders. Finally we argue for the inclusion of appropriate stakeholder feedback and persuasive mechanism, to incentivise building user behaviour to support organisational level sustainability policy.
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paper_title: Pragmatic Aspects of Collaborative Problem Solving: Towards a Framework for Conceptualizing Dynamic Knowledge

paper_content:

Knowledge production in the Social Web can be understood as a dynamic socio-cultural process. Mechanisms that support users to explore this knowledge in an effective and efficient way may bring various benefits. However, the construction of these interaction mechanisms depends on further research on multidisciplinary fields. The interpretation of the content by users is influenced by meanings and intentions, as well as by the understanding of the evolution of these aspects over time. This paper analyses the evolution of meaning and intentions in collaborative problem solving. The analysis is informed by Semiotics and Speech Act theories. From this analysis, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for multidisciplinary research in three interconnected perspectives: interactive, conceptual and technical.
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paper_title: The Business of Business Modeling

paper_content:

The research problem in this case study is to test a business focused approach to business process modelling as a foundation for the specification of an information architecture. The approach should be based on a common background and a good mutual understanding between practitioners from the business and the analyst, both for the modelling process itself and as a precondition for a valid model. In the case study some guidelines are explored to find the essential process model reflecting the general specifics of the business sector and the position of the individual company in the market.
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paper_title: An Evaluation Framework for Migrating Application to the Cloud: Software as a Service

paper_content:

Software as a Service (SaaS) is one of cloud computing offerings that attract organisations as a potential solution in reducing their IT cost. However, the functionality and reliability of the SaaS model is still questionable and raises concerns and hesitations in its adoption. This chapter proposes a framework that enables an organisation to assess its current IT landscape and provides readiness assessment for SaaS adoption. The framework adapts Business Aligned IT Strategy (BAITS) methodology as its foundation. A case study of a local council in UK is used to validate.
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paper_title: Creating an iDTV Application from Inside a TV Company: A Situated and Participatory Approach

paper_content:

TV is a highly social and massive media that is worldwide available. The Interactive Digital TV represents a new device that is still constructing its identity. Designing applications for it is a challenging task, partially because of its intrinsic complex context and the lack of theoretical and methodological referential to support design activities. In this paper, we argue for a Socially Aware Computing approach to the design of iDTV applications, articulating artifacts and methods from Organizational Semiotics and Participatory Design. A case study on requirements for the design of an iDTV application is situated in the practical context of a Brazilian broadcasting TV Company. The results show benefits of using informed artifacts and methods in participatory and situated practices, indicating that it is possible and viable to make socially aware design in industrial settings.
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paper_title: Interfaces cérebro-computador de sistemas interativos: estado da arte e desafios de IHC

paper_content:

In Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) the user is able to interact with a computer only via biological signals of your brain without the need to use muscles. This is an research field on the rise but still immature relatively. However, it is important to think now about the different aspects of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field related to BCIs, which should be part of interactive systems in the near future. As contributions of this work we highlight the prospecting of state of the art of BCIs and identification of HCI challenges on this subject matter.
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paper_title: Eliciting Requirements for Learning Design Tools

paper_content:

The need to properly design educational intervention, representing explicitly what students and teachers are planned to do, has been acknowledged in literature. Thus, Learning Design (LD) tools, if made accessible and usable by teachers, can bring significant benefits potentially improving results of educational practices. Although effort has been made in developing systems to support the learning design process, literature has shown they have not yet reached a sufficient spread among teachers. This paper investigated the subject by conducting semio-participatory practices with a group of teachers at a distance, to understand the meaning they make to issues regarding learning design practices and representations, aiming at eliciting user requirements for a prospective LD tool.
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paper_title: Syntactic/Semantic Formalizations and Metrics of Residential Applications Based on Gestural Interface

paper_content:

The development of residential applications with gestural interaction focuses often only on technological and physical aspects in the construction of its applications. The use of technologies that support gestural recognition might restrict the gestural commands of an application. We argue that an abstraction of gestural interaction is required for a more comprehensive interaction approach. In an attempt to reduce problems related to gestural interaction, in this work, we formalized gestural interaction syntactically and semantically. The syntactic formalization uses building blocks that produce a grammar of the Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) type. The semantic information is described by the point of view of residential application, together with their actions or services offered in the application. Additionally, we analyze the relations and combinations of gestural interaction syntactically formalized in generating a set of metrics for evaluating qualities of interaction that are based on recommendations for residential systems, in which the entire description comes from the pre-established syntactic formalization.
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paper_title: A New Way of Modelling Information Systems and Business Processes - the NOMIS Approach

paper_content:

NOMIS – NOrmative Modelling of Information Systems proposes a new way of thinking, modelling and developing information systems (IS). This approach is based on Human Relativism (HR), a new human centred philosophical stance in line with IS reality. As a corollary of applying HR ontology, NOMIS adopts the human observable action as its kernel modelling element. Besides HR, NOMIS has also its roots on three IS socio-technical approaches, namely Organisational Semiotics, the Theory of Organised Activity and Enterprise Ontology from where some of its specific vision and views are inspired. For modelling purposes, NOMIS provides its own notation and, alternatively, a correspondent set of UML profiles. This paper presents an overview of NOMIS together with an empirical case study of a library system. This case study is used to demonstrate NOMIS application and, primarily, to highlight some new and important concepts in NOMIS that are mostly missing, neglected or misused in other modelling approaches. Some of these concepts affect the way business processes and information systems in general, are understood and modelled.
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paper_title: Providing adaptive smartphone interfaces targeted at elderly people: an approach that takes into account diversity among the elderly

paper_content:

The growth of the elderly population in many countries makes it necessary to develop appropriate technologies for them. These include mobile phones, as they are increasingly becoming cheaper and more widespread. Furthermore, many families would like their elderly relatives to use this technology as a means of fostering digital inclusion. However, the current designs for mobile devices software are aimed at a young audience, rather than taking account of the different needs of the elderly. The elderly population can be characterized by their wide diversity which can be attributed to decades of varied experiences. Moreover, this is heightened by sharp differences in acquired education levels, use of technology at work, cognitive skills and physical dexterity. The authors believe that this diversity is even more striking in developing countries, such as Brazil, since in these countries a huge economic gap still exists between different elderly people. This paper seeks to investigate: (1) What can be done to solve the problem of enabling the elderly to use smartphone interfaces and (2) how one should develop adaptive smartphone interfaces that can be targeted to the elderly. With this in mind, this paper shows how a prototyped platform was implemented and evaluated. It is worth stressing that real-life experiments with Brazilian elderly people were carried out. The results suggested that there had been a reduction in the interaction time as well as a significant increase in user satisfaction.
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paper_title: Designing Natural User Interfaces Scenarios for All and for Some: An Analysis Informed by Organizational Semiotics Artifacts

paper_content:

The design of Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies is still in its early stages; therefore, it does not have well-established guidelines, especially ones that consider the context of Accessibility. This increases the challenges for designers of these technologies to achieve products fulfilling their purpose. . In this paper we present a research project that aims at exploring NUI devices within the Accessibility context, with the goal of proposing ways to promote a better design for NUI technologies. We present this project from an Organizational Semiotics perspective, so that the context we aim to focus on shows itself clearly during the entire design process. Our ultimate goal is to promote better NUI designs, especially for people with disabilities, supporting their autonomy and inclusion in society.
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paper_title: Sign Systems, Information Systems, and Engineering

paper_content:

This paper will address the question of how an engineering approach to enterprise modelling and system development might be combined with an approach to enterprises that does justice to its inherent social character, and where the members of the organisation are responsible for their decisions and not just operators of the systems. In the analysis of this question the concept of engineering will be discussed, along with the characteristics of different kinds of sign systems. System based sign systems (as used in ICT and engineering, and suited to the use of mathematical and logical formulas) will be contrasted with human based sign systems (natural language, appropriate for the adequate representation of values and of individual cases).
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paper_title: An Interaction Design Method to Support the Expression of User Intentions in Collaborative Systems

paper_content:

The communication and interpretation of users’ intentions play a key role in collaborative web discussions. However, existing mechanisms fail to support the users’ expression of their intentions during collaborations. In this article, we propose an original interaction design method based on semiotics to guide the construction of interactive mechanisms, which allow users to explicitly express and share intentions. We apply the method in a case study in the context of collaborative forums for software developers. The obtained results reveal preliminary evidences regarding the effectiveness of the method for the definition of interface components, enabling more meaningful and successful communications.
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paper_title: A value-oriented and culturally informed approach to the design of interactive systems

paper_content:

Cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, and behavioral patterns influence the way technology is understood and used, and the impact it may cause on the environment and on people. Although there is influential literature devoted to the subject of values and culture in Human-Computer Interaction, there is still a lack of principled and practical artifacts and methods to support researchers and practitioners in their activities. In this paper, we present a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Approach (VCIA) to sensitize and support Computer Science and Engineering professionals in taking values and culture into consideration throughout the design of interactive systems. The approach is grounded on theoretical and methodological bases of Organizational Semiotics, Building Blocks of Culture, and Socially Aware Computing. VCIA offers a set of artifacts and methods articulated to support the design process in its different stages and activities: from the identification of stakeholders and their values, to the organization of requirements and the evaluation of the designed solution. In this paper, we present VCIA's principles, artifacts, and illustrate its usefulness in bringing values into consideration, supporting a socially aware system design. Values and culture are approached in design in a joint, explicit and informed way.Theoretical and methodological basis from different areas are articulated.Introduction and explanation of informed artifacts created to support designers.Instantiation of a process for involving values and culture in design activities.Case study explains the process in action and shows its contributions.
---
paper_title: Social awareness in HCI

paper_content:

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. ---Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor
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paper_title: The silent language

paper_content:

Leading anthropologist Edward Hall analyzes the many aspects of non-verbal communication amd considers the concepts of space and time as tools for transmission of messages in this fascinating study. The Silent Language is a work of interest to both the intelligent general reader and the sophisticated social scientist.
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paper_title: Considering values and cultural aspects in the evaluation of interactive systems prototypes

paper_content:

As interactive systems have left the context of offices and workplaces to pervade every aspect of people's personal and social lives, evaluating these systems is becoming an increasingly complex challenge. Issues that range from emotional and affective aspects, sociability, and human values, to scalability, security, and performance, are now in play. This situation is very different from all designers and researchers have experienced before. In this paper we focus on the evaluation of interactive systems in the context of the third HCI paradigm, proposing an artifact to support designers in a culturally informed and value-oriented evaluation. To situate our discussion in a practical context, we present a case study where the artifact was used to evaluate seven prototypes of social applications for the Brazilian Interactive Digital Television.
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paper_title: Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering

paper_content:

1. Introduction Part I. Semiotic Framework and Methods: 2. Understanding semiotics 3. A semiotic framework for information systems 4. A semiotic approach to information systems development 5. Knowledge representation and information analysis 6. Semantic analysis 7. Pragmatics and communication 8. The social layer: modelling organisations as information systems Part II. Applications: 9. From semiotic analysis to systems design 10. Semantic temporal databases 11. Normbase: a new approach to information management 12. Case study: development of a land resources information system 13. Case study: development of a test construction system Appendix A. Semantic templates and surrogate specification Appendix B. LEGOL applications in the CRIS case References Index.
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paper_title: Assessing Pragmatic Interoperability of Information Systems from a Semiotic Perspective

paper_content:

Most of studies on interoperability of systems integration focus on technical and semantic levels, but hardly extend investigations on pragmatic level. Our past work has addressed pragmatic interoperability, which is concerned with the relationship between signs and the potential behaviour and intention of responsible agents. We also define the pragmatic interoperability as a level concerning with the aggregation and optimisation of various business processes for achieving intended purposes of different information systems. This paper, as the extension of our previous research, is to propose an assessment method for measuring pragmatic interoperability of information systems. We firstly propose interoperability analysis framework, which is based on the concept of semiosis. We then develop pragmatic interoperability assessment process from two dimensions including six aspects (informal, formal, technical, substantive, communication, and control). We finally illustrate the assessment process in an example.
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paper_title: Designing tailorable software systems with the users’ participation

paper_content:

There are several barriers that prevent Brazilian citizen to access knowledge, including the way in which computational technology is presented considering the diversity of interaction skills in our population. One approach for suiting the diverse and mutable interaction requirements is to tailor interfaces according to the users’ preferences or needs. Although literature regarding tailoring presents results with diverse foci, there has been a lack of works considering methods and techniques to support designers in their practice. This paper presents a practical approach to elicit and formalize the tailorable behavior making interactive systems more flexible. The elicitation of the different possible interfaces is performed with users’ participation and the tailorable behavior is formalized with a norm-based structure. A case study, in the context of an inclusive social network system, is described as well as the evaluation with final users.
---
paper_title: Emerging manufacturing paradigm shifts for the incoming industrial revolution

paper_content:

Industrial revolutions have transformed manufacturing to mass production. However, there is a controversy about what production paradigm is emerging along with the incoming new industrial revolution. Most focus is either on smart manufacturing or 3D printing (additive manufacturing). This study converges smart manufacturing and additive manufacturing to form the long tail of making things as a paradigm shift for the new industrial revolution, which results in an ideal production system with the advantages of both economies of scale and scope. With the introduction of social aspects, socio-cyber-physical system (SCPS)-based manufacturing is proposed from the organizational semiotic perspective and exemplified by the four pillars of Future Internet. Furthermore, an extended version of the long tail is formed by the two modes of SCPS-based manufacturing: wisdom manufacturing and social manufacturing, which reviewed as the logical extension of smart manufacturing and additive manufacturing, respectively. Finally, a general interoperability model for SCPS-based manufacturing is suggested, which can also be applied to other integrated manufacturing systems.
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paper_title: Beyond the social search: personalizing the semantic search in social networks

paper_content:

Nowadays search mechanisms are decisive to people successfully access relevant and valuable information. In the current Web environment, people connected to each other through Social Network Services (SNSs) bring new challenges for search approaches. Recent literature in the SNS field shows expressive evolution but the approaches for searching still utilize mechanisms that just consider the syntactical processing of the information. Based on sociocultural aspects of a SNS, we propose a novel approach that enables to provide personalized semantic search. This approach makes use of ontologies to represent the shared meanings, and consequently to present better organized, ranked and adapted search results for each SNS user. The paper presents the way the proposed mechanism was implemented and points out examples that illustrate the possibilities raised by the approach.
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paper_title: A semiotic based method for evaluating automated cockpit interfaces

paper_content:

Issues of Human-Machine Interaction in the aircraft's cockpit are well known as causes of events that collaborate with material and human losses. In this scenario, the design and evaluation of interfaces must follow rigorous methods. The objective of this work is to develop an evaluation method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within the cockpit in order to reduce erroneous actions. This method is based on theories and techniques from the Organizational Semiotics (OS) field. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated in a case study in an aeronautical simulated scenario with the participation of three pilots. The intention is contribute to the advancement of knowledge in HCI cockpit environment, particularly in the understanding of human factors related to semantic, pragmatics and the situational awareness aspects of the interaction with computing devices, as well as creates a feasible method to evaluate these factors during the execution of the mission' tasks.
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paper_title: Incorporating Semiotics into Fuzzy Logic to Enhance Clinical Decision Support Systems

paper_content:

In order to enhance the quality of care, healthcare organisations are increasingly resorting to clinical decision support systems (CDSSs), which provide physicians with appropriate health care decisions or recommendations. However, how to explicitly represent the diverse vague medical knowledge and effectively reason in the decision-making process are still problems we are confronted. In this paper, we incorporate semiotics into fuzzy logic to enhance CDSSs with the aim of providing both the abilities of describing medical domain concepts contextually and reasoning with vague knowledge. A semiotically inspired fuzzy CDSSs framework is presented, based on which the vague knowledge representation and reasoning process are demonstrated.
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paper_title: Values and Cultural Aspects in Design: Artifacts for Making Them Explicit in Design Activities

paper_content:

Values and cultural aspects must be considered for providing design solutions that make sense to people. Although there is influential literature work devoted to the subject of values and culture in design, there is still a lack of principled and light-weighted artifacts and methods to support designers in this task. In this paper we propose two artifacts for supporting designers in making explicit both stakeholders’ values and system’s requirements in design. We situate our discussion in a case study where the artifacts were used to support the design of seven prototypes of applications for Interactive Digital Television in the Brazilian context. The results were promising and indicated the artifacts’ usefulness to support designers in dealing with values and cultural aspects in design activities.
---
paper_title: Interaction design of social software: Clarifying requirements through a culturally aware artifact

paper_content:

Taking part in a social software is a growing reality worldwide, while the interaction design of social software is still a challenging task due to the lack of third HCI paradigm artifacts, methods, tools and even theories for supporting designers. In this paper we present an artifact for the requirements clarification activity, and suggest some activities in order to guide designers to take cultural issues into account. We situate our discussions in a practical context related to the development of social software for professionals of the Special Education field.
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paper_title: Knowledge elicitation and representation in a normative approach-a case study in diagnosis of plant diseases in Egypt

paper_content:

Knowledge becomes a pivotal factor for intelligence to support decision making. Elicitation, representation and use of knowledge are major areas of research in the field of Artificial Intelligence, leading to development of knowledge bases and expert systems. Knowledge base system (KBS) development is complex, expensive, and time consuming process that needs to be applied in an organized manner. There are powerful tools for eliciting and representing KBSs. Using these tools becomes a very difficult task for users without specific knowledge in Artificial Intelligence. The aim of our research is to use a normative approach to elicit and represent the knowledge. To achieve this we build an elicitation and representation tool NormEST which allows the domain experts and the non-technical users are able to build their own KBSs. NormEST can be considering as a new approach in eliciting and representing the knowledge. NormEST is designed based on the concepts of Organisational Semiotics and evaluated by group of agriculture domain experts, the Delphi technique used as evaluation method to illustrate the top 10 ranked benefits of using NormEST. NormEST is demonstrated using a case study in fungal diseases in cucumber in Egypt. The results indicate that the NormEST is able to facilitate effective elicitation of parameters needed for an agriculture diagnostic experts system.
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Title: Studies in Organisational Semiotics: A Systematic Literature Review

Section 1: Introduction
Description 1: Describe the emergence and aims of Organizational Semiotics (OS), the influence of pioneering authors, and the objective of this paper to review the use of OS in recent studies.

Section 2: Research Method
Description 2: Explain the systematic review process used, including the development of the study protocol and data extraction strategy.

Section 3: Research Question
Description 3: Summarize the central research questions raised to address the objectives of the literature review.

Section 4: Search Strategy
Description 4: Detail the databases searched, the search string used, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied for selecting papers.

Section 5: Data Extraction Strategy
Description 5: Discuss the considerations and specific kinds of data extracted to achieve the review goals.

Section 6: Results
Description 6: Summarize the extracted data related to the stated research questions, highlighting key findings on OS theory usage.

Section 7: How Do Researchers Employ OS Theory?
Description 7: Describe how authors adopted different OS theories like Semiotic Onion, Semiotic Framework, Semantic Analysis Method, and others.

Section 8: What are New Approaches Derived from OS?
Description 8: Present new methods, artifacts, and frameworks developed based on OS concepts.

Section 9: Where Have These Studies Been Published?
Description 9: Reveal the types of publications and conferences where OS studies have been published.

Section 10: How Many Papers Using OS Have Been Published Since 2011 Per Year?
Description 10: Provide data on the number of papers published each year since 2011.

Section 11: Discussion and Conclusion
Description 11: Discuss the overall findings, the increase in OS publications, the practical significance of OS, and suggest directions for future research.