Interactivity in the Context of Designed Experiences

Interactivity is something researchers study, new technology commercials promote, and designers create. It's not something people do. People use the internet, watch TV, shop, explore, learn, send and receive email, look things up... The word interactivity and its derivatives are used to represent so many different meanings that the word muddles rather than clarifies the speaker's intent. The construct is worth salvaging carefully so future research more clearly defines the interaction parameters of interest and specifies what aspect(s) of interactivity are being examined. This article offers a conceptualization of interactivity and suggests domains for operationalizations intended to be useful for researchers and designers. The Muddle: Common uses of interact and interactive Interactivity is an overused, underdefined concept. Everything a human does to or with another human can be called an interaction. Human interactions that use media are mediated human interactions. Everything a human does to or with a computer is a human-computer interaction. The curriculum development group of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/) suggests, "there is currently no agreed upon definition of the range of topics which form the area of human-computer interaction." Instead they offer a brief definition followed by a chapter-long elaboration. "Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them (Chapter 2 p. 5)." Most germain to this article, "on the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive psychology, and human performance are relevant. And, of course, engineering and design methods are relevant." Ted Hanss (1999) used the word interact or interactivity 17 times in a recent talk about Internet2 applications. In addition to PEOPLE and COMPUTERS, here are some things he mentioned that humans interact with using Internet2: INSTRUMENTS (scanning electron microscope) DATA (atmospheric, oceanographic) ENVIRONMENTS (fly through spaces, collaboratively view and annotate virtual environments) SIMULATIONS (a farm over four seasons) VISUALIZATIONS (construct, record, and preview scientific visualizations; MRI brain scans) MEDIA CLIPS (audio library) Interactivity is frequently discussed by designers, often meant as a synonym for navigation and sometimes just generally to refer to good web site design. For example, "interactivity on a website is the ability to make the interface with a visitor an easy rather than a difficult process (http://www.webbonanza.com/interactive.html)." Some software manuals and design books use interactivity to refer to mouse events (mouse up, mouse down, roll over). Others reserve interactivity to describe more complex programming in Javascript to provide logic for gaming or database calls to dynamically compose content. Alan Cooper (1999 p. 22) describes a broad domain he calls Interaction Design -"the selection of behavior, function, and information, and their presentation to users." Using Interactive to Emphasize Changes in Passive, Traditional Media Before the Internet, before PCs were common, mass media industries (newspapers, books, movies, radio, and television) created and marketed packaged content to be consumed by passive audiences. Mass communication researchers studied the one way flow of programming sent by media industry sources over media systems to consumer audiences. In the mid 1980s, communication researchers began to write about new technologies bringing interactivity to mass media. Rice (1984 p. 35) described new media as communication technologies that "allow or facilitate interactivity among users or between users and information." Reacting to expanded channel lineups brought by cable TV, remote controls, and prototype videotext systems, Heeter Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol 1 No 1 (Fall 2000), pp. 4‐15. © 2010 American Academy of Advertising, All rights reserved ISSN 1525‐2019 5 Journal of Interactive Advertising Fall 2000 (1989) offered seven observations about interactivity in emerging media systems: 1) Information is always sought or selected, not merely sent. 2) Media systems require different levels of user activity. (Users are always active to some extent). 3) Activity is a user trait as well as a medium trait. Some media are more interactive than others; some receivers are more active than others. 4) Person-machine interactions are a special form of communication. 5) Continuous feedback is a special form of feedback in which behavior of all users is measured on an ongoing basis by a source (e.g. videotex system) or gatekeeper (e.g. cable operator). 6) The distinction between source and receiver is not present in all media systems. 7) Media systems may facilitate mass communication, interpersonal communication, or both. When new technologies and services are introduced which change a traditionally passive media experience to be more active, it makes sense to talk about interactive television or interactive drama. On the other hand, describing a video game, computer program, or web site as interactive doesn't mean much since all video games, computer programs and web sites are, to some extent, interactive. Here is a table of present day interactive television services (company names and categories from a table in Evans 1999). The range of services is diverse; the common thread is each is somehow a different viewer experience than traditional passive one-way television. Table 1. Interactive TV Services category interactive services