@techreport{TR-IC-98-10,
  number = {IC-98-10},
  author = {Osvaldo Luiz de Oliveira and M. Cecília Calani Baranauskas},
  title = {Semiotic Proposals for Software Design: {P}roblems and Prospects},
  month = {April},
  year = {1998}, 
  institution = {Institute of Computing, University of Campinas},
  note = {In English, 13 pages.
    \par\selectlanguage{english}\textbf{Abstract}
      Recently, the wide use of computers raised the need for better
      interface design. As a complement to the traditional cognitive
      approaches to interface design some proposals based on Semiotics are
      being addressed in the HCI literature. In such approaches the
      interface is understood as a collection of messages sent by the
      designer to the user. With a focus on the relationship
      designer-message-user these approaches do not make explicit the
      dialogue between the user, the interface entities and among the
      entities themselves. This paper discusses the main current proposals
      for applying Semiotics to software design, their underlying drawbacks,
      and proposes using of Semiotics to make explicit the design of the
      communication among the entities that inhabit the interface.
  }
}