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RESEARCH PRODUCT

From Extensity to Protensity in CAS: Adding Sounds to Icons

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Being aware of the gap between technological offers and user expectations, the paper aims to illustrate the necessity of anthropocentric designs ("user-pulled") and to reveal the dangers of current ICT designs ("technology-pushed"). Since the gap is deepened because of insufficient innovative use of new agent-oriented technology potential, an affordable manner to "invent new Computer-Aided x" application domains is proposed. To substantiate the approach, the domain must be challenging, easy to implement and "as humanist as possible": Computer-Aided Semiosis (CAS). On this background, the paper also presents a new and challenging concept in IT applied research, borrowed from psychology and meant to assist the process of semiosis: protensity. If the prior researches focused on images and implicitly on extensity (i.e. extensity versus image-based messages; protensity versus sound-based messages), the idea is to extend CAS through innovative attributes, in line with music-oriented user expectations. Thus, the paper refers a newcomer in agent-oriented technology: the Protensional Agents (i.e. interface agents represented on the screen as pseudo-avatars). The paper concludes that CAS is a pathfinder for other researches in this field and the concept of CAS could be used for immediate applied research. Moreover Smart DJ is a good example also for the applicability of CAS in the field of protensity-based messages.