Semiotic Design and Analysis of Hypermedia

The paper proposes a semiotic framework inspired to the Generative Trajectory of Meaning by A.J. Greimas to the design and analysis of hypermedia. The framework is structured into four levels of signification and allows the designer to control the semantic coherence and optimize the communication during the hypermedia development. We investigate its practical feasibility by constructing an instructional hypermedia regarding a collection of ancient mosaics from a roman villa. Our results indicate that the proposed approach opens novel perspectives, and looks promising towards the definition of semiotic methodologies of hypermedia design.