Technology & Teamwork Meeting the Needs of Users: Toward a Semiotics of the Web Karl L. Smart Brigham Young University Judy Cossell Rice Financial Fusion, Inc. Larry E. Wood Brigham Young University The tremendous growth of the lnternet has brought a heightened awareness of the importance of designing information to meet customers' needs. Although we may never develop universal design standards that apply to every situation, we need more empirically supported guidelines to inform design decisions. Guidelines must be based on commonly shared semiology of Web conventions. A semiotics of the Web can help us determine how meaning is derived from Web pages and the Web, and in turn how to better design sites to convey intended and desired meanings. This article identifies six categories or dimensions of design issues relating to the Web that serves as a beginning of a Web semiotics. Each dimension is explained, with various research issues and questions suggested. INTRODUCTION The Internet has become a major mode of communication in the 90's along side the television and telephone. As a communication medium, the Internet has capabilities that allow information designers to uniquely meet users' needs. But as a relatively new medium, it does not yet have the established standards or conventions needed to best leverage it as a communication tool: it lacks a coherent, accepted semiotics. Semiology is the study of"signs" or "'texts" (including anything that stands for something such as words, images, sounds, gestures, or objects) and the study of how we create meaning from these signs in world around us. Semiotics involves the study of semantics (the meaning of signs), syntax (the relationship between signs), and pragmatics (the ways in which signs are used and interpreted (Ullman, 1972; Noth, 1990). Although the Web builds upon many other communication mediums (printed text, sound, video, animation, for example), we need to 593 0-7803-6431-7/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEETechnology & Teamwork identify specific elements or dimensions of the Web that impact communication. In this paper, we identify six categories of design issues relating to the Web that serve as a starting point for a semiotics of the Web. We review current suggestions for design and research in each of the categories and suggest questions about these dimensions that can assist Web designers in making informed decisions. DIMENSIONS OF WEB DESIGN Identifying the common elements impacting Web design provides a starting point for creating a semiology of the Web that can be used for empirically establishing and validating design guidelines. Our review of existing research on Web design elements found these six dimensions frequently used to describe and evaluate Web sites: • Typography • Site structure and cognitive design • Medium use • Message content • Appeal • Accessibility These dimensions identify areas that Web designers must address in designing sites and provide a basis for establishing guidelines. Each dimension serves as an area where additional research should be pursued. We discuss each dimension and its to relationship to establishing guidelines or standards as part of a semiotics of the Web. TYPOGRAPHY Typography is the art of using typeface, page layout, and color to convey the meaning of text. Typographic conventions help readers to locate material on a page and provide clues in understanding its importance. The study of how the human eye perceives textual information and how the mind attributes meaning to those perceptions has a long history. Although we possess an understanding of these elements and conventions in print mediums, the Web requires designers to revisit some issues because of the medium's unique capabilities. Specifically, such issues as typeface, line length, and white space are semiotic elements affecting users" understanding. For instance, Web designers need to address typeface in ways different than traditional print medium. Typeface is defined by its form and counterform, stems and bowls, ascenders and descenders, character spacing, word spacing, line spacing, and margin spacing. Descriptors such as serif or sans serif are used to identify typographical characteristics. Each of these elements contributes to the readability of text. Research has documented and studied the interaction of Roman letterform elements and the human visual system. Web designers, however, have largely ignored much of the research on typeface or fonts since users originally controlled these elements through browsers and personal computer preferences. 0-7803-6431-7100/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE 594Technology & Teamwork HTML was originally designed as a generic, platform-independent markup language with the primary purpose to transfer information commonly found in scientific journals. The HTML code delivered content and basic structure (headings, lists, and paragraphs) but left to the individual users to specify the format and the display of different levels of meaning. The viewer's personal browser settings determined fonts, font sizes, ways of indicating type weight or emphasis (such as italics, bold, underlining, and colors). As the Web has moved from the narrow domain of scientists, current Web users and designers have had different needs and expectations than the early adopters of Web technologies. With a shift in the user population, Web designers demand greater control over document layout. The introduction of style sheets and Java-generated fonts, along with the next generation of Web document markup languages (DHTML and XML), have given Web designers greater control over typography, similar to those working with print-based content. With these innovations, Web design researchers now need to examine readability problems in the context of today's users and current display capabilities. Previous research on typography can inform us about many of the issues faced by Web designers. Sclmver (1997) provides a good starting point for research on the effects of typeface in online documents by summarizing paper-based typographical studies. She reports the following from studies on the effects of typeface on legibility and speed: * Readers equally prefer serif and sans serif typefaces • Serif typefaces may be more readable in long passages of text • X-height is as important, if not more important, than font size • Leading of 1 to 4 points improves performance • Line length