A taxonomy of semantic design knowledge

Forms, either abstract or concrete always carry meanings. It is the responsibility of designers to make good use of these meanings, for example to make products beautiful, exploiting all the sensorial aesthetic languages, to stress the importance of certain values, or to improve a product’s ease of use to create and facilitate richer experiences. It is important for designers to have access to and a full understanding of the structure of product semantics and the relevant types of knowledge so that they can effectively communicate the intended "design Ideas" or messages though the different aspects of any given "thing". In this article we undertake the construction of a scheme to classify the knowledge needed to respond to the wide variety of phenomena that determine product meanings. One of the central ideas is that different knowledge sorts are needed for understanding objects and for understanding people.