Re: [Usability] Future of the menu top bar?]

["Shane M. Coughlan" <shane shaneland co uk>]

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Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On May 12, 2006, at 6:08 AM, Shane M. Coughlan wrote:
>> ...
>> Semiotics would suggest that the placement of the menu at the top of
>> the screen is not fitting psychologically.  The 'top' is generally
>> understood to be ideological in Western cultures, with the left area
>> being given to known information, the right to new information, and
>> the bottom to data with less priority or the status of predictability
>> (much the same as the left).
> 
> Citations, please.

Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen (1998): 'Front Pages: (The Critical)
Analysis of Newspaper Layout'. In Allan Bell & Peter Garrett (Eds.):
Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 186-219

Kress and van Leeuwen engage specifically with the analysis of newspaper
front pages. They consider that the layout composition of a front page
involves three signifying systems: Information Value, Salience and
Framing. Information Value involves the concepts of Given and New, Real
and Ideal, Centre and Margin. Given is positioned on the left and
represents already known situations. New is on the right and gives us
unknown information. Real is positioned at the bottom and it presents us
with more specific information whereas Ideal is positioned at the top
and gives us a more generalised picture of the event. Centre is either
an important information element and is framed by a margin containing
other elements, or is not clear but there is a conception of it.

This work is based on Roland Barthes? visual semiotics.

Barthes, Roland, "Le message photographique", in Communications,  1,
1961, pp. . Also in Barthes, Roland, L´obvie et l´obtus. Paris: Seuil
1982, pp. 9-24.

Barthes, Roland, "Rhétorique de l´image", in Communications, 4, 1964,
pp. 40-51. Also in Barthes, Roland, L´obvie et l´obtus. Paris: Seuil
1982, pp. 25-42

Of course Semiotics is much wider in scope than newspaper analysis.  A
very good place to start with regards Semiotic reading is
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html

There an area of Semiotics that applies specifically to computing.
Outline available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_semiotics

>> ...
>> - From the perspective of traditional semiotics it would make sense to
>> have ideological data like application names and/or documentation
>> names at the top, but to have predictable active objects on the left
>> of the screen. The middle and right of the screen should contain new
>> information like dynamic user data (desktop?).
>> ...
> 
> I double dog dare you to define "ideological data" with reference to
> human-computer interfaces.

OK :)

As above "Ideal is positioned at the top and gives us a more generalised
picture of the event."  Ideological can be connected with general
ideology of some sort - like a logo - or it can be understood to provide
the framing context for our interaction with the information.  When it
comes to human-computer interfaces we might understand this to be the
place where (a) identification logos can be placed, and (b) where
general information pertaining to the current information event can occur.

However, you are absolutely right with your underlying assertion that
textual and visual Semiotic analysis does not automatically translate
into multimedia analysis in the context of computing environments.  I
don't suggest that we can make such a link directly and uncritically.
However, there is the possibility of learning much from pre-existing
research regarding human perceptive methods and existing social encoding.

Shane

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