The Semantic Turn
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the semantic turn a new foundation for design the semantic turn a new foundation for design klaus krippendorff gregory bateson professor for cybernetics, language, and culture the annenburg school for communication university of Pennsylvania Boca Raton London New York A CRC title, part of the Taylor & Francis imprint, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group, the academic division of T & F Informa plc. Published in 2006 by CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 Boca Raton, FL 33487–2742 © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/. No claim to original U.S. Government works ISBN 0-203-29995-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34998-9 (Adobe eReader Format) International Standard Book Number-10:0-415-32220-0 (Print Edition) (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13:978-0-415-32220-1 (Print Edition) (Hardcover) Library of Congress Card Number 2005051077 This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reprinted material is quoted with permission, and sources are indicated. A wide variety of references are listed. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and the publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or for the consequences of their use. No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access http://www.copyright.com/ (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC) 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978–750–8400. CCC is a not-for- profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krippendorff, Klaus. The semantic turn: a new foundation for design/by Klaus Krippendorff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-32220-0 (alk. paper) 1. Design- Philosophy. 2. Design, Industrial—Social aspects. I. Title. NK1505.K755 2005 745.4–dc22 2005051077 Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc. Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the CRC Press Web site at http://www.crcpress.com Dedication To: Horst Rittel for being a dedicated and inspiring teacher and an enthusiastic explorer of complex design issues—greeting each new discovery with his mischievous smile—but above all, for entrusting me with my own ideas. John Rheinfrank for reintroducing me to design with cutting-edge projects—always playing with ideas and struggling for clarity while enabling his team members to make things happen. Reinhart Butter for practicing product semantics well before it had a name, teaching me what he learned with his students, and never wavering in seeing the virtue of the semantic turn. Without his longtime collaboration, encouragement, and practical projects, this book would have been unlikely. Marge Thorell for listening to the excitement and drudgery of writing this book and making her time with me generously available for it. …philosophers have only interpreted the world…; the point is to change it. Karl Marx, 1845* Laß us menschlich sein.— Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1937** …vocabularies—all vocabularies, even those which contain the words which we take most seriously, the ones most essential to our self-descriptions—are human creations, tools for the creation of such other artifacts as poems, Utopian societies, scientific theories, and future generations.…changing the way we talk… (is) changing what we want to do and what we think we are. Richard Rorty, 1988*** * The 11th Thesis on Feuerbach in German Ideology, Karl Marx (1845). ** Literally but not connotatively: “Let us be human.” Culture and Value, Wittgenstein (1980:30). *** Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty (1989:53, 20). Table of Contents Foreword xi Introduction and Overview xiii Chapter 1 History and aim 1 Chapter 2 Basic concepts of human-centered design 36 Chapter 3 Meaning of artifacts in use 71 Chapter 4 Meaning of artifacts in language 138 Chapter 5 Meaning in the lives of artifacts 166 Chapter 6 Meaning in an ecology of artifacts 180 Chapter 7 Design methods, research, and a science for design 192 Chapter 8 Distantiations 253 Chapter 9 Roots in the Ulm School of Design? 274 References 300 Credits 310 Index 312 About the Author 334 Foreword When Thomas Kuhn introduced the notion of a Paradigm Shift into the public debate, he was describing the periodic reconstruction of accepted ideas, roles, and procedures in scientific inquiry.* Most of what he said applies to ideas in design as well. But after the design profession embraced Sullivan’s 1896 principle, Form Follows Function,** the celebration of mass producible forms by the Bauhaus in the 1920s; the affectation of “streamlining” adopted when design aligned itself with marketing in the 1930s; the influence of operations research in the late 1940s; the practice of minimalism by the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) at Ulm in the 1950s and 1960s; the predominance of the systems approach in the 1970s; and the concern with concurrent engineering in the 1980s and 1990s are at best advances in design thinking that pale by comparison to the paradigm shift in design we are now witnessing. What outsiders do not appreciate, perhaps, is the conflict and pain that theorists and practitioners experience during the transition from one paradigm to another. Reinhart Butter, Klaus Krippendorff, and I happened to be at the HfG Ulm during 1960 to 1961, when the prevailing functionalist paradigm came to be questioned and started to break down. The HfG Ulm was a school far ahead of its time. There, the protagonists of form- follows-function and minimalism, on the one hand, and the rather diverse advocates of gestalt psychology, operations research, systems theory, and sociology of technology, on the other, were engaged in continuous and bitter disputes that later fueled many debates in the larger design community. Although the dissolution of the prevailing paradigm seemed imminent then, a new synthesis was not yet in sight. Significant ideas and inventions have their gestation periods. To take root, paradigm shifts require a new generation of proponents, a fertile cultural climate, but also significant technological advances. It is not surprising, therefore, that the term “Product Semantics” did not emerge until 1984.*** * Thomas Kuhn (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ** Louis Henry Sullivan (1896). The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1896. http://www.njit.edu/v2/Library/archlib/pub-domain/sullivan-1896-tall- bldg.html. *** Klaus Krippendorff and Reinhart Butter, Eds. (1984). Product semantics; special issue of Innovations 3, 2.The Semantic Turn reviews the history of semantic concerns in design, presents their philosophical roots, and lays out several compelling design methods that take seriously what Klaus Krippendorff considers axiomatic for human- centered design: that humans do not respond to the physical properties of things—to their form, structure and function—but to their individual and cultural meanings. This premise radically breaks with functionalist traditions in design. A new paradigm is recognized when its basis has become obviously true while rendering previous truths obsolete. I fully subscribe to the book’s premise and its far-reaching implications. Some thought that semantic considerations would merely add to the design discourse. However, they became not only the key to the design of human-machine interfaces, they are now the principal drivers of information technology. Product semantics, the way I have observed it taught at The Ohio State University (OSU), was only the first step toward that long-awaited synthesis. The Semantic Turn boldly outlines a new science for design that offers designers a solid ground on which to state and validate their claims—not unlike the “hard” disciplines, but without the shortcomings of Herbert Simon’s 1969 proposal.* I am particularly pleased about the inclusion of systematic design methods, as they are rooted in my own contributions. Klaus Krippendorff accomplishes this synthesis as a recognized designer and as a distinguished scholar of human communication and language use. Reinhart Butter contributes examples from his pioneering explorations at OSU. The Semantic Turn is an indispensable guide for the future of the design profession and a must for students, teachers, practitioners, and employers of design. I applaud the work that went into this remarkable redesign of design. Bruce Archer London May 15, 2005 * Herbert A.Simon (1969). The Sciences of the Artificial