Interactivity
Arts
by
Clement Mok
The word “interactivity” has become a computing world buzz word,
but it has a meaning that illuminates an ultimate goal: to create a totally
immersive experience. It takes several disciplines, each difficult to
manipulate, to compose a successful interactive experience, and everyone
who uses digital media to communicate is searching for guidelines and
ways to achieve it. Like information design, interactivity design is not
new, only a new focal point in media studies - but the recent popularity
of multimedia has fostered many attempts to formulize it as a discipline.
Interactivity design borrows many concepts and models from the study of
ergonomics, semiotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and
theater. The computing medium is quickly absorbing the principles behind
those disciplines and art forms, which is making it possible for visual,
sensory experiences to materialize on screen. The interactivity arts can
transform those experiences into meaningful, humane communication.
Unlike identity and information design, which are manifested in specific forms, interactivity design results in the display of actions. Interactivity design itself, however, is not an activity, though the slight differences between interactivity design and interface design might make it seem so. As different as look and feel, or appearance and behavior, these two “inter” disciplines are often viewed as one, but judging each one requires distinctive criteria.
Just as the application of information arts collectively forms an information design, it is the collective application of interactivity arts that results in interactivity design. In the digital domain, each interactivity art results in a directed action that generates cognitive responses or captures a process that reveals an action. The most basic function of an interactivity art is providing a cue for a specific action. Interactivity arts emerge through an interface as bells, a blinking cursor, or a pointer that changes shape as it moves around the screen. When these arts are strung together as a series of actions, the results are the process of interactivity design.
Theater and filmmaking are analogous to interactivity design. Where the application of book arts – papermaking, bookbinding, writing, editing, illustration, and typesetting – results in something people can see and hold in their hands, what an actor does – the application of theater arts – results in an impression, not something that can be seen and felt like a book. Interactivity design deploys many of the same skills and tricks actors practice.
The way interactivity arts are implemented depends on the media they are being applied to. Imagine the actions involved in browsing through a book: one involves pressing a button and invoking a linear sequence of images; the other is the physical activity of opening a book and turning it’s pages, which sometimes results in a non-linear sequence of text and pictures.
So far, in the early stages of the computing medium, many of the attempts of providing a way for the highly adaptive humane system and a machine to conduct cogent discourse have been primitive and feeble. Successfully designing any kind of interactivity in the computing medium requires balancing technological feasibility with the integrity of the content. If a website is to be designed so that users can browse, make transactions, and play games, each of these actions must be coordinated and then integrated into a system; interactivity design comes into play when the paths of these actions intersect. The quality of an interactive experience is determined by how well the designer crafts the transitions at the intersections. A good interactive piece has invisible construction and an effective graphical user interface; it maintains integrity in the experience it generates by providing and reinforcing context. A designer must integrate interactivity design within a content structure; without content, interactivity design is just a parade of winking, blinking shapes.
Clement Mok, one of the premier information architects of the digital age, understands the computing medium as do few others. He began his design career in New York. He spent five years at Apple Computer as a creative dirtector, then founded Studio Archetype in 1988. Currently he serves on the visionary board at Sapient.
