Signs and properties
This article presents a concept of signs and properties, as well as how it might be useful for you.
The concept of signs and properties
Any object (product, business, system, human, etc.) has its signs and properties. And these are different terms, not synonyms.
Property: a regularly manifested attribute of an object. The property of an object does not manifest itself, but only through its signs. Properties are changeable.
Sign: some condition sufficient to assign the object to any category. Signs manifest themselves in the interaction of objects. Signs are permanent.
Let’s examine these terms by way of example: a ripe apple, decent person, powerful computer, interesting book.
- Ripe apple. Property: ripe. Signs: sweet, red, large, fragrant.
- Decent person. Property: decent. Signs: words, behavior, appearance.
- Powerful computer. Property: powerful. Signs: CPU Frequency, RAM size, graphics card model, power supply capacity.
- Interesting book. Property: interesting. Signs: the plot, the style of content, the design of the publication.
Many signs can correspond to one property. The same sign may correspond to several properties. Here the “many-to-many” relationship is perfectly applicable:
What does it give and where can it be applied?
This concept can be applied in many areas, solving very diverse issues: UX, sales, marketing, social relations, business tactics and strategies, and many others.
In other words, this concept is applicable to everything that surrounds us. To understand, consider the following examples.
Examples
To demonstrate this let us examine a particular application by one of our favorite example “shoes in the store.”
You come to the store to buy shoes. On the shelf you find two pairs of perfectly identical shoes, indistinguishable from each other. Only one costs 5,000, and the other 10,000. Which ones will you choose?
If there are no other signs, then the shoes compete with each other only on price and most often wins the one with the lower price. So the overwhelming majority would buy it for 5,000. Few (if the price differs by 30% or more) would ask “what is the difference between this shoes and the others?”. You do not see any signs and since experience suggests that if the price is different, then there must be a reason, so you begin to seek out and to come up with at least some difference. And if you don’t find it, then what’s the point to overpay?
By the way, there is an option when you would buy the more expensive one — only if you are going to voice this “expensive” price to everyone you know as a sign of your solvency. At the very end of this article you will find the corresponding example.
So far, let’s look at three examples of dishes, in order to understand how the signs affect the understanding of properties.
A pair of glasses. One worth 1,000, the second 5,000. Exactly the same situation as with the shoes. It is completely unclear where such a difference comes from. Maybe from one drank Elvis at a concert?
A pair of glasses of different colors, the same price tags — one and five thousand. Again there is not enough information to understand the difference and pricing. You see that the color is different, but nothing more. Neither the size nor the pattern on the glass is different. How to make decision of purchase? Again we would buy for the lowest price, or we think out for ourselves the arguments why a more expensive glass is better.
A pair of shot glasses. The same price difference: glass 1,000, metal 5,000. But here you already have enough signs to justify the difference for yourself:
- one is simple glass, nothing fancy.
- the second is metal (maybe even silver), with a beautiful bas-relief and a stem.
The more signs the object has, the easier it is to understand its properties and to relate it to one or another category of things.
Application of the concept of signs and properties in different fields
HR. Interview.
The simplest example that everyone has come across is an interview when applying for a job. HR expert sees signs of the candidate before an actual meeting.
- CV: the structure of a CV, grammar accuracy, photo, email address, matching to the particular job.
- Meeting: arrangements and their fulfillment, punctuality, pre-warning about being late, appearance, communication, manners, gestures, facial expressions, language.
All these signs show such properties of an applicant as general education, cultural background, adequacy and many others.
For example, a follow up phone call after a job interview with a request for the results of an interview perfectly characterizes the applicant’s perseverance and his desire to follow through.
Kitchen. Boiled eggs
On the kitchen table are two brown eggs. How to determine whether they are boiled or raw? Externally, the eggs are completely identical. The answer knows every housewife: twist it. Boiled will spin, but not raw. Through the sign “spinning”, we understand that this egg is boiled. But, if you change them several times in places on the table, you again will not be able to understand which one is boiled and which is raw.
Now imagine that one egg is white, and the second is brown. At the first look there will be the same problem: it is not clear which one’s which. But by twisting it, we’d see that the white spins. So, we’d say, “white is boiled.” Now, even swapping them several times, you always correctly determine which one is boiled and won’t get your pants dirty by accidentally breaking a raw egg onto your lap. Put it any way you want, the sign of “boiled” remains in white egg.
What happened? You correlated the sign with a specific property, although the color and condition of the egg are generally not related at all (by the way, the difference between correlation and cause-effect relationships is a great topic for another article!). We will discuss the correlation of signs and properties and their manipulation at the end of this article.
Military Tricks
Consider the application of the concept of signs and properties in tactics and strategies.
- Sun Tzu in his treatise “The Art of War” writes that: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” In other words, show signs that are characteristic of properties opposite to yours.
- ‘Make a Feint to the East While Attacking in the West’ is one of the key principles of warfare described in the ancient Chinese military text ‘The 36 Stratagems’ and it says exactly the same thing. You should show opposite signs, than those that are peculiar to you. The enemy perceives only the signs: noise, movement of troops, physical attack. But he does not see your true intentions.
From other examples that are known from history and are used in films:
- to install sacks of straw on the city wall or even the corpses of fallen comrades so that the enemy can see a large number of defenders. Here the sign of the victory of the defenders is the number of their squad, which is simulated; on the other hand, attackers in the night can make a lot of fires, showing that there are far more than they actually are. Here fires are an external sign perceived by the defenders of the besieged city; On the dusty terrain, a small detachment tied tree branches to horses to raise clouds of dust, imitating the movement of a huge army.
UX / UI
- Underlined text has long been a sign that this text is a link.
- The sound when pressing the button can differ for successful and unsuccessful pressing. Sound is a sign. The success of clicking is a property.
- Product card on the page of any online store. All the characteristics written on this card are, in fact, the signs to guide the user. Price is a sign that can take into account both these signs and the goods remaining in stock. Dynamic pricing (for example, used in the sale of train or airline tickets), in fact, in a sign of price takes into account the property of demand. Only there it is realized, and in many online stores you won’t even see on the website the quantity of goods left in a warehouse.
- If you apply this offline, where schedules of office / gym / bank branch workload is often known (and sometimes can be seen on the door), it can modulate fee-for-service payment. Many gyms do this. Price as a sign of demand in the first place.
- You can also change the final price depending on the method of delivery and payment. In fact, this is done by many, but as additional shipping charges and with a separate price tag.
Changing the signs of an object as a result of a change its properties is the principle of Russian constructivism, called “Factura”.
Dynamic pricing and taking into account for the price of goods the demand perfectly implement this principle. The main thing is not to forget to show the sign of demand (remaining items) off, so that the consumer can see it.
- The countdown at traffic lights is also a sign of the property “waiting”. By the way, the principle of Factura here manifests itself in switching from green to red and back.
- Uniforms in supermarkets. This is a sign of the store employee. It is much easier for a user to navigate by hight visible clothes than to look for badges on visitors’ chests.
- A corporate identity is a signs of a company’s brand.
Pull the signs out to show all the possible properties of the object. This is also the principle of Russian constructivism called “Tektonika”.
For example, let’s consider the email client / chat messengers in mobile applications. In many cases, it’s made in such a way that it can be pushed aside and will then show some options (frankly, I learned about these thing quite accidentally after someone told me about it).
Using the Tectonika principle, we can suggest an improvement: when the device is inclined the chat line shifts to the side, showing three colored stripes and opens them when pushed. This way we pull the object’s properties out and make them available to the user.
In all the described examples it is clear that the signs build our perception and understanding of the properties of objects, their essence and meaning. Hence, the universal rule:
Hide signs to hide properties. And, on the contrary, create (or fake) the signs in order to attribute the missing properties to the object.
An example of an object where both signs and properties are hidden is the antenna of your cell phone. Previously, they were external and stuck out.
Now they are built inside on the phone’s board. You do not see it, you use only the results of it’s work, without even realizing it.
If suddenly the antenna breaks (for example, when broke a raw egg on your pants you after all and dropped the phone), then you immediately begin to perceive a sign of a broken antenna — lack of communication. By the way, the same sign can also appear at the cell tower, which was struck by lightning. Without accurate diagnostics (establishing other signs) you will not be able to determine which properties have been violated or even which objects are the cause of the manifestation of these signs and the carriers of these properties.
The more accurately you link the signs to each other, the easier it is to classify an object or in other words, to understand its properties. This is an another principle of Russian constructivism— “Construction”.
True and the reverse: if you can’t clearly understand what is it they are talking about, what is the difference between the products in the store, whether to hire an employee, whether this ticket from a travel agency is good enough for you, this can only mean that there are lack of signs. See what other information you can collect directly or indirectly. But keep in mind that all signs must be checked if they are specifically related to the object.
It seems to be pretty basic stuff, but how often do you make decisions without having a whole picture?
Finally, let us consider an example from consumer economy.
Your neighbor has bought the latest model of a cell phone from a leading brand. Having this phone is a sign. Sign of what? Its properties is “rich”, as well as the presence of expensive cars, luxury watches and other “dolce vita” signs.
But expensive things are also signs of high status, good job with big income, perhaps also the quality of education and other properties of the person everyone considers successful.
Therefore the entire consumer economy is the acquisition of signs to show more clearly their existing or desired properties. To build them in the eyes of others, above all.
It is much easier and more effective to change the signs in the short term to build the desired image than to change the property that creates these signs. If you change the properties (your personal, your business, your smartphone or your car), then their signs will manifest themselves in the long term and by itselves.
Hence the example with the cell phone described above, crutches in a software development, divergence from the commercial offer and the actual implementation of the project, beauty treatments, quoting of great people in the social networks and much more.
Separate the signs and the properties and “get to the root “!
In the next article we will take a closer look at the principles of Tectonika, Factura and Constructions, described by Alexey Gan’s in his article “Constructivism”, 1922.
Special thanks to Wova Roodnyy for ideas and consultations.
