This document discusses a study on the semiotic appropriation of information and communication technologies (ICT) tools for people experiencing loss of autonomy. The study involved deploying home automation and ICT healthcare packs in the Creuse district of France and evaluating their usage and acceptance. Key findings included that most families wanted to continue using the equipment but found communicating technologies less acceptable. The researchers also emphasized the importance of considering users' experiences, skills, and dignity when designing ICT tools to ensure pleasurable and meaningful interaction.

1. On the semiotic appropriation
of ICT tools
for people in loss of autonomy
+ + * + *
N. Pignier , D. Tsala-Effa , L. Billonnet , A. Geslin-Beyaert and J.M. Dumas
University of Limoges
+
Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques (CeReS)
Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines
*
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Limoges (ENSIL)

2. Outline
I. Introduction and context
II. Deployment of home automation and ICT packs
III. Major results
IV. Learning from experimentation…
V. What about semiotics?
VI. Methodology
VII. To a human-machine semiotic interface

3. I. Introduction and context
Creuse is one of the oldest population in Europe
« How Europe will stand within the next 20 years… »
The district of Guéret
 19 towns
 29000 inhabitants
http://www.cc-gueret.fr/

4. II. Deployment of home
automation and ICT packs
Home automation and ICT healthcare solutions for:
 Motor disability
 Security
 Social link
 Actor’s coordination as a function
of patient troubles and housing
Equipments packs :
 Pack A : Comfort & Communication
 Pack B : Security
 Pack C : A + B
 Pack D : Enhanced B
 Pack E : A + D

5. III. Major results
Appropriation and interest at home:
 The major part of families wish to maintain the equipment and
imagine a system of coverage mutualized for a better financing.
 The equipments of home automation are better accepted than the
“communicating equipments” (which did not work well).
Appropriation and interest in medical institution:
 Persons with a single room take better benefit of the equipments.
 The professionals show a better image of themselves.
 Decline of the stress for people in charge of disoriented persons.

6. IV. Learning from experimentation…
 Only 8 % of the calls come from a situation of loss of autonomy.
 ICT: a wish but still an unsuitable system; feeling of disappointment.
 Poor consideration of human being, user friendliness, personalization,
dignity and respect.
 Feeling of intrusion and stigmatization.
 Training and information needed for a better appropriation of equipments.
1. Need for an ethical dimension.
2. Appropriation of ICT tools is a condition of success.
… to the semiotic approach

7. V. What about semiotics ?
1. Definition
 Saussure (1916) : “The life of signs within the social life”.
 Today semiotics is a human science which analyzes systems of
signification, whatever the language which expresses them:
texts, utterances, pictures, spaces, etc.
2. Semiotics of the ICT includes two main directions:
i.the multimedia, multimodal and hypertextual contents;
ii.the graphic and material interfaces.
In both cases, the semiotician questions the conditions of perception
of a text or an object on a digital support.

8. V. What about semiotics ?
3. Semiotics of the ICT in the field of health
 is interested in the way the user, with his current skills and the
gestural, cultural experiences which he developed in the course of the
practices of the everyday life perceives such or such digital object intended to
help him.
 As a consequence, the ICT object is acceptable only insofar as it interacts
with the person through his experiences
(ex : failure of the light path that does not tell the story of the person).
Finally, the semiotician thinks out the coherence between design of a
digital device and the perception the user can have of the interaction
with this device.

9. VI. Methodology
Importance of the gestural interaction
The specificity of the material interface is not only connected to the
shape, the size, the color but it also includes the mode of gestural
interaction.
 Gesture = any physical movement required by the digital interfaces of the objects to
activate an action
Gestures required by the material and graphic device to interact with
the digital object constitute a modality that is a set of specific rules,
based on a singular value system.
 Example of gestures : press on a button in the keyboard, pinch fingers on a touch-
sensitive screen to shrink an image, spread them to enlarge it, ...

10. VI. Methodology
Our hypothesis: the pleasure of the interaction
1. The pleasure bound to the use of a digital object can be of
diverse nature.
 It can be bound to the aesthetics, andor to the performance,
andor to the features…
 but also to the gestural relation.
2. The pleasure bound to the interaction with the object can
appear from various modes of interaction, each based on a
particular system value.

11. VI. Methodology
The 3 modes of interaction
Learning Simulation
SS
SS
Specific keyboard Orange Gestures 2011
Proximity effect
between the body « Le plaisir de l’interaction
and the digital object entre l’usager et les objets
TIC numériques »
Auteure : Nicole Pignier
Habit Revue : Interfaces numériques
SS
AF & SNCF terminals Editeur : Hermès-Lavoisier
Parution : Janvier 2012
Effect of similarity between gesture
for action on the digital object

12. VII. To the human-machine semiotic
interface (HMSI)
Necessary conditions
To generate sense for the user
 the designer has to think of the graphic and material interface of the digital
object according to the specificity of the user (his gestural
memory, lifestyle, biography).
Under an HMSI situation, the relationship is unbalanced.
 The biographical elements taken into account are only those of the user, not
of the machine even for a humanoid.

13. VII. To the human-machine semiotic
interface (HMSI)
Necessary conditions
The interaction user/digital object : only a quest of result or also an art to
make, a process?
To generate sense for the user, the designer has to think the interaction not only
as result, efficiency, because this point of view supposes that the body of the
user is only an instrument which serves to activate commands but also as
process, art to make.
In this case, the designer supposes also that the body of the user find, during the
relation with the object, a dynamics, a cooperation on which bases itself the
pleasure of the interaction.

14. VII. To the human-machine semiotic
interface (HMSI)
Intuitive interfaces for a natural gesture
Several mono or multimodal interfaces techniques
 dematerialized interfaces
 vocal interfaces (analysis and synthesis)
 virtual interfaces using gesture recognition
 augmented reality and virtual assistive information
 haptic, visual or auditive augmentation as a an assistance
 haptic, visual or auditive augmentation as a validation
 intuitive tactile sensitive processes
 as a projection of an intuitive gesture

15. On the semiotic appropriation
of the ICT tools
for people in loss of autonomy
+ + * + *
N. Pignier , D. Tsala-Effa , L. Billonnet , A. Geslin-Beyaert and J.M. Dumas
University of Limoges
+
Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques (CeReS)
Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines
•Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Limoges (ENSIL)