davidpaulrosser{blog}

I received my new brief a couple days ago. The title as mentioned in my blog post is ‘Design for Interaction’.
I was expecting this project to tie in with the current topics we have been discussing in Cultural and Critical studies. It actually ties in very well to this brief as its based on the theoretical concepts of Interaction. Luckily I did a presentation on ‘Databases as a symbolic form’. I came across some useful information I can use within this brief.

So before I get started with my research, Im going to outline my research plan. This plan should hopefully give me a structure to work to. Think of it as an index to my blog post. This will enable me to produce a framework for my interactive theory concept.

• What is interactivity?
• The concepts of interactivity
• Does interactivity improve our standard of living?
• Interactivity and narrative
• Recent examples of interactivity within New Media
• User Interface Design
• Successful models of GUI

What is Interactivity?

The definition of Interactivity, in computing terms, is the dialogue and events that occur between human and machine.
Interactivity in human communication has evolved this world to this point. Every material possession we see around us is the result of human communication and interaction. Without interaction this world would be a very different place in my opinion. I would like to quote from the brief introduction:

“The process of interactivity, whether on a personal or sociological level, remains an integral part in the way in which we lead our lives”

I can say that I agree with that quote. Interactivity is an essential part in the way we live our lives. I know I straying a little of topic but I feel the need to briefly cover human interaction. I found a blog post on the subject: ‘Good mental health’ (Source). In this post the author talks about essential human needs, what we need within our lives to keep us mentally stable. In many of the essential human needs it involves human interaction. The need for attention, friendship are just a few to name. I think that covering human interaction is important in the way we understand computer interaction.

The concepts of Interactivity

Interactivity has a broad range of uses within Digital Media. Many of these uses come from a commerical perspective. Businesses use new forms of interactivity to sell products. A obvious example would be a Nintendo Wii. A classic case of human interaction with a machine.

The result is in the form of entertainment, not just for yourself, but for your friends and family to enjoy. The reason why the Wii is so successful in terms of interactivity is that it involves it’s users more with the narrative and content of the game. Other consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 focus more on blockbuster style narrative and content.

Other interactive concepts could be: Hospital equipment. An interactive piece of equipment to help the Doctors, and generally the people who need the specific treatment.

Interactivity has a infinate amount of concepts. The most successful concepts are the ones we already know about. I my opinion, thats what make’s this subject so interesting.

Does interactivity improve our standard of living?

Depending on your personality, I would say that interactivity in new media has contributed in some form to our lives. Technological advancements has led to an easier lifestyle. One that requires less hard work (Not necessarily a good thing). An example would be telephone communication. A mobile device that lets us communicate with someone from anywhere in the world. This could be seen as a vital part of modern day living.

Another recent successful example would be Microsoft’s Surface.

A multitouch interactive computer designed as a table, mainly used within the commercial sector. Allowing users to interact in numerous ways. For example, a business could use this within their company by developing the table to enhance their customer experience. Say for instance this was placed in a mobile phone store. The customer could place phones on the table to bring up information on the model and specification of the phone. Creating a more immersive experience for the potential buyer of the phone, this would therefore increase sales and attract customers. The only negative factor would be the cost of the table to buy.

So is this an essential human need? I would argue no, but for what it’s built and used for, it can make a big difference in a commercial environment.

Interactivity and narrative

This topic has caused many debates over the past few weeks in Cultural and Critical studies. Does Interactivity need narrative to be successful? Let’s have a look.

Roderick Sims who wrote “Interactivity for Narrative? A Critical Analysis of their Impact on Interactive Learning” says ‘What is often omitted is an analysis of aspects of the total interactive experience that will maximize engagement (manifested through learning, knowledge acquisition or skill development) and the overall communication of content.’ basically saying, interactivity can maximize a users experience whilst getting the information across to the user.

A recent example would be an interactive movie website for instance, such as Disney’s Christmas Carol.

This website and many others of its kind relies heavily on interactivity to engage the audience with it’s narrative. Even though the interactivity of this website is linear, it still provides a more fun and engaging experience than a standard website with no interactive elements in.

Here’s an example of a successful interactive installation by Adobe in New York that doesn’t have a narrative but engages the user within its brand.

There are cameras set up to track people’s movement walking past the installation. The installation animates vector based graphics to the movement of people walking past. Even though there isn’t a story for this installation it still provides a fun interactive experience for the users.

Another example would be the Piano stairs:

In Odenplan, Stockholm, Volkswagon created an installation to encourage people to use the stairs over the escalator. They came up with a theory called “The Fun Theory”. Which basically means to improve/change people’s behavior for the better, whether is for the environment or something else.

The concept behind this installation is if they could make the stairs more fun to walk up and down, people would choose the stairs over the escalator. So they created a giant piano with each step as a piano key. In the video you can see how different personality types are interacting with the installation. They mention within the video that 66% more people chose to use the stairs. This was probably down to the interaction between the person and the installation. Making an everyday task, such as walking up and down stairs something more fun to do is an excellent way to improve people’s health in the long term. Which I guess was the main point of this installation.

To conclude this subject, my personal opinion on this is that Interactivity doesn’t need narrative to be successful. Nor does narrative need interactivity. But, depending on what the concept is, it is more successful to mix to two together. Bringing out each others strong points.

Recent examples of interactivity within New Media

Im going to start of with Project Natal, an interactive webcam/toy for the Xbox 360 which Microsoft has been developing over the past few years.

On Microsoft’s Project Natal page they are promoting the following points:

• No Strings (or Controllers) Attached.
• If you know how to move your hands, shake your hips or speak you and your friends can jump into the fun
• The only experience needed is life experience.

Following off the Wii’s success Microsoft have developed Project Natal for in home family entertainment. You can see within the video what the camera can do. A pretty powerful piece of technology that can recognize facial expressions, peoples voices and full body movement plus more. I can see this product being a huge success. Virtual games have become more popular over the past several years. This could be due to the Nintendo Wii, Webcam games and Augmented Reality applications. As I mentioned before, these applications provide more interactivity and an immersive experience for the player(s).

Moving on, I want to talk about Data driven interactivity. This topic is something I came across at a Jer Thorps session at Flash on the Beach 09.
More or less a year ago I came accross a video for Radiohead called “House of Cards”:

I’m not going to get into the technical specifics of how the video was made. I want to talk about using data to generate art for interactivity. This is a topic I’ve personally been experimenting with over the past few months. My idea was based on the Rorschach test. I basically set up a webcam feed in Flash and manipulated the colours using the ColorMatrix to set the colours to black and white. This is something that I have yet to finish.

When researching I came accross Aaron Koblin’s work.

This guy’s work is insane! He was the Director of Technology for House of Card’s Music video. On his website you can interact with the data: zoom in, rotate, play the data live. This effect hasn’t been used that much within the Design and Interactive Industry as it’s a very experimental topic in New Media. The effect reminds me of the Metal pin art.

User interface design

“The user interface is the most important part of any computer system. Why? It is the
system to most users. It can be seen, it can be heard, and it can be touched. The piles
of software code are invisible, hidden behind screens, keyboards, and the mouse.
The goals of interface design are simple: to make working with a computer easy,
productive, and enjoyable.”

Galitz, W, O. 2007. The Essential Guide to User Interface Design, An Introduction to GUI Design Principles and Techniques. 3rd ed. Canada: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design” Source

1 Strive for consistency
Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations; identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens; and consistent commands should be employed throughout.

2 Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
As the frequency of use increases, so do the user’s desires to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.

3 Offer informative feedback.
For every operator action, there should be some system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response can be modest, while for infrequent and major actions, the response should be more substantial.

4 Design dialog to yield closure.
Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and an indication that the way is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.

5 Offer simple error handling.
As much as possible, design the system so the user cannot make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect the error and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.

6 Permit easy reversal of actions.
This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone; it thus encourages exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete group of actions.

7 Support internal locus of control.
Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.

8 Reduce short-term memory load.
The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires that displays be kept simple, multiple page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions.

Successful models of GUI

Max OSX

1) The user has access to a variety of options. These options range from shutting down the Mac to help documentation. Although these options prove helpful for the user, the terminolgy used to describe some items requires the user to read the instruction booklet. An example would be ‘Finder’.

2) Here resides the utilities of the Mac. You have the option to add icons as shortcuts for certain utilities. The default utilites are Spotlight (which searches through the mac), a clock, battery status, internet connection, bluetooth and speaker volume. These are considered to be the most important utilities for the user to access.

3) The dock, which is probably the most used part of the Mac’s GUI, helps the user open, minmize, close programs. It acts as the central point of access through the mac. The user has the ability to drag and drop applications onto the dock, aswell as folders.

I can see that the Mac interface has been designed for easability. It has simplified the functionality of the Windows Interface. This could be seen as one of the reasons for Apple’s success of the Mac OSX.

Sky TV

Sky TV is the UK’s largest pay TV provider. Source. Their GUI has remained more or less the same over the past decade. This is due to a good graphical interface. As you see below, the home screen contains catagories. These catagories break down their service so the user can access the material as fast as possible.

The user can interact with Sky either through the setup box or the sky controller:

The controller is an intergral part of the service. It provides the user with accessability to the service from their own sofa. The controller requires the user to interact with the device in order to achieve their goal.

The GUI is laid out in tables. The tables on the first column tell the user which channel their browsing. The tables on the right contain all the channels scheduled programmes. The combination of the controller with the GUI make Sky’s service easy to use, for everybody.