Characterizing intercultural encounters in human-computer interaction

Abstract

This article presents a two-step study, which is part of a project that aims at investigating how cross-cultural systems, intentionally or not, express and promote indirect intercultural encounters in Human-Computer Interaction. Previous research have proposed five Cultural Viewpoint Metaphors, a Semiotic Engineering conceptual tool to support HCI designers to understand and organize communicative strategies in the interactive discourse to promote such encounters. At this stage of our research we investigated the design of cross-cultural systems using CVM and one of the best known among numerous classes of signs proposed by Peirce – icons, indices and symbols, aiming at supporting the semiotic engineering (specifically, the choice of signs, i.e. the interface elements) of these kind of applications. Our findings point at the power of an alignment of the semiotic characteristics of Cultural Viewpoint Metaphors with theoretical semiotic elements from Peirce’s typology of signs in the interaction design cycle of crosscultural systems.