Interactivity

1. May 18, 2010 Interactivity

2. Interactivity • User control over content or form of representational space • Non-linear access • Feedback • The Oxford English Dictionary defines interactivity as “interaction, reciprocal action, action or influence of persons or things on each other.” • Andy Lippman of MIT Media Lab defines it as “mutual and simultaneous activity on the part of both participants, usually working towards some goal, but not necessarily.” • Journalism: Interactive Story

3. Interactivity as the experience of Information • Interactivity as a way to create experience of knowledge (Shedroff)

4. Data • Data Central • Shedroff: “Data isn’t valuable as communication because it isn’t a complete message … Data is not meant for ‘consumers’ and too often we deluge our audience with data instead of information, leaving them to sort it out and make sense of it.”

5. Information • Provide data with context and build meaning • Create relationships and patterns • Change over time • Size comparison

6. Experience of Knowledge • Shedroff: “Knowledge is communicated by building compelling interactions with others or with tools so that the patterns and meanings in their information can be learned by others.” • Local/global • Knowledge as participatory

7. Experience of Knowledge • Edgar Dale cone of experience • Created 1946 • Dale was exploring the use of av in education

8. Wisdom • Shedroff: “We cannot create wisdom like we can data and information, and we cannot share it with others like we can knowledge. We can only create experiences that offer opportunities and describe processes. Ultimately, it is an understanding that must be gained by one’s self.” • 30 Days

9. Emotional reaction to organization of data

10. Vietnam War Memorial • How organized? • How does that spur emotion? • Is it interactive?

11. What makes information interactive? • Shedroff: “It is precisely the ability to see the same set of things in different organizations that allows people to uncover the patterns in the relationships between these things. Ideally, people should be able to rearrange the organizations themselves or be provided with different arrangements so they can begin to understand these patterns for themselves.”

12. User control of information • How Different Groups Spend Their Day

13. Amount of Interactivity • Lets evaluate your choices

14. Interactivity is … whatever you want it to be? • Not quite. • Erik Bucy • Interactivity as a property of technology, the communication setting or perceptions of user

15. Perceptions of Interactivity • Bucy: “Any networked medium or communication perceived as interactive becomes so to the user – an insight supported by a large body of research.”

16. Such thing as “too” interactive • “This may be due to the extra effort needed to navigate through additional layers of information without the actual benefit of obtaining more information.” • Page 379 in Bucy article • Gulf Coast Oil Spill

17. Action and Outcome • “This process of action and outcome comes about because players interact with the designed system of the game.” • Four modes

18. 4 Modes of Interactivity • 1: Cognitive. Psychological, emotional and intellectual participation between person and system • 2: Functional. Interface. Legibility • 3: Explicit. Choices and procedures. Ex. Clicking hyperlink, following rules of a boardgame • 4: Beyond the object. Within culture of object.

19. Design creates meaning • Representations

20. Space of Possibility • Designed elements, create user experience