SEMIOTIC APPROACH FOR THE DESIGN OF ADAPTIVE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES USING UNIVERSAL NETWORKING LANGUAGE
Gabriela Tissiani, Hugo César Hoeschl, Ricardo Miranda Barcia · 2002
The growing Internet infrastructures are providing a larger platform for communication among people across the world. The t echnological advances and the socialization of Internet have challenged web developers to search for new strategies to help the communication among people from different countries. It is a fact that a gap exists between the information and culture in different languages. In order to overcome the language barrier, the Universal Networking Language (UNL) emerges as a new technology that can reduce this problem. Furthermore, the ultimate goal of UNL is to expand education and business opportunities around the world, through a mutual understanding among different cultures based on the translation of the textual media available on the Internet. Although most of UNL infrastructure and architecture is already designed, it is still at an early stage of development. One of the challenges to be achieved during this development process is how to represent the distribution of the same textual content in different languages, considering all the elements of a Graphical User Interface (GUI). It is a huge step for those who are used to deal with GUI for standard web pages to start working with Adaptive User Interfaces (AUI) for different cultures and languages. A GUI that uses UNL technology request a more organized flow to allow users interacts with the application in a friendly and effective way. The authors believe that it is possible to generate a framework to UNL GUIs design, based on semiotic studies for standard GUIs design, besides the requirements for the UNL system. Considering that semiotics covers a diversity of si gn-usage like images and texts, it is helpful to the task of interface design. In the case of UNL interfaces, it may contribute to the proper design of textual