BLOG 21: Lifeworlds and Knowledge Agents
Semiosis 101 - 5 minute semiotic read
Klaus Krippendorff, in his design book The Semantic Turn, argues for design thinking to move beyond a client/creative bias, in order for meaning to be communicated beyond the elements that form the aesthetic outcome. This framing of the creative process beyond an unhelpful client/creative binary, considers that ‘design thinking’ deals with people and their experiences.
The phenomenologist Edmund Husserl coined the term ‘lifeworld’ to frame the rich lived experience that human’s draw on to make sense of new encounters. As such, a lifeworld encompasses an individual’s entire existence in-the-world since birth.
All their positive and negative past experiences are filed away in their memory banks. Your audience use these socio-cultural prior reference points to interpret and understand what you designers and illustrators are visually communicating. Your target audience are knowledge agents.
We are all human. You designers and illustrators
obviously are and so are your target audience. Your audience are not an abstraction. They are real human beings that you are trying to visually communicate to. We all encounter the world each day. We all grow up within a dominant culture, with its own cultural reference points.
But we also are exposed to many other sub-cultural and cross-cultural visual stimuli. Some we like. Some we do not. Looking at people’s shared experiences within the remit of a particular target audience can begin to suggest clues to you as to what visual qualities the audience will find familiar and perceptually respond to.
These are the visual qualities, resemblances and familiarities your audience will associate with the concept you are trying to visually communicate. It is in qualitatively Hypothesising your target audience’s lived experiences that your visual language can harness the best Iconic semiotic building blocks to help you to enhance your visual communication effectiveness.
The architect Nigel Cross calls Abductive reasoning (a working Hypothesis) the Logic of Design in Thomas Wendt’s book Designing for Dasein. Wendt states that you creatives use logic and reason in different ways. Peirce defines logical reasoning as either:
Deductive = formal logic
Inductive = logic of science
Abductive = logic of Hypothesis
Wendt argues that you “use Induction and Deduction to understand the present state of [your audience’s] world, and then use that insight to Abductively create alternate futures.”[1] Therefore Abductive reasoning (as the Logic of Design) uses Hypothesis to understand the context in which you will craft your meaning-bearing aesthetic using pragmatic semiotic sign-action.
Klaus Krippendorff argues that “meanings are constructed from previous experiences, expanded on them, and drift, much like imagination does.”[2] As a designer or illustrator, during your ideation phase , you will be sketching possible ways to solve your client’s communicational needs. We can call your ideation the “what-could-be-phase”.
As illustrators and designers, the what-could-be is NOT an absolute truth to Deduct. This what-could-be-phase is NOT a scientific proof to Induct from the evidence. Your what-could-be-phase ideates the most appropriate creative solution to first hook your target audience attention. Once attention is retained the audience can begin to perceive and interpret what is being visually communicated.
In your what-could-be-phase you can Abductively reason, using a working Hypothesis, what visual qualities you can utilise from your audience’s own reference points which they will associate with the concept.
With a working Hypothesis you illustrators and designers can quickly begin to shape your understanding of what visual qualities and resemblances your audience will be familiar with. These insights to your audience’s reference points and can help you to sketch visual ideas that will represent the intended concept.
With Abductive reasoning you can initially be wrong in your assumptions, but in initial ideation any errors are not terminal. In ideation, you dare yourself “TO FAIL” enough times in order to begin to get a sense of what WILL visually communicate the intended message. With a working Hypothesis you can utilise Abductive reasoning to inform your visual language decisions to what Iconic familiar qualities and resemblances to employ aesthetically.
Your audience are knowledge agents to what prior reference points they will associate with your concept. I cover more of this in many Semiosis 101 episodes (so check out the Lifeworld playlist on YouTube), and in my 2026 Semiotics for Designers and Illustrators book.
[1] Wendt, T. (2015) Design for Dasein: Understanding the Design of Experiences, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, p18.
[2] Krippendorff, K. (2006) The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design. Boca Raton: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group, p56.
Semiosis 101
