Task 7 – Short Essay on Interactivity

The seventh task – “a free-form short essay reflecting on your personal understanding of interactivity, your synthesis of the studied material and your perception of interactivity today.”

In search of my own understanding…

It is inevitable that we face interactive systems in our daily lives — be it anything we use in our personal computers, shopping, driving using GPS, bank systems… We do not need to recognize it, but we do experience it. As it is so ubiquitous, it is extremely challenging to define a usable and useful term.

The concept of interactivity has been a subject of discussion to many authors and numerous papers start with facing the fact that the term has no solid theoretical definition. Those papers gave a lot of food for thought, made the picture buzzier at some point and then again cleared it up a bit.

Definitions

According to Jensen’s definition from 1998, interactivity is a measure of a media’s potential ability to let user exert an influence on the content and/or form of the mediated communication. Giving the concept more flexibility four sub-concepts were introduced: transmissional, consultational, conversational and registrational interactivity. These sub-conepts were based on the two central aspects of all information traffic whereby the question of the owner/provider of the information and the controller of the distribution is of importance. (Jensen, J. F. 1998)

Ten years later Jensen has reviewed his definition and added four new typologies capturing the interactive new media landscape. He added new matrix views of latest media forms, user generated, filtered, controlled and edited content; time, space and format shifting (Jensen, J. F. 2008). The renewed version is not an addition to the concept or definition but gives more possible matrix views to the rich field of interactive media.

Jensen has mostly worked on the different sides of media. But Kiousis stated that interactivity should be considered both as media and psychological variable and came to a definition combining various fields and aspects. His definition ties up structure of technology, communication context and user perception providing each with operational measures (Kiousis, S. 2002). His approach already concentrates more to the user perception and therewith to what I find most facinating — user psychology and experience.

My Understanding

To me the most appealing approach is desribed by Manovich in 2005. First of all when the question comes to computer-based media he states — “the concept of interactivity is a tautology” — everything presented in computer is interactive for the user. Thereby we could use various constructions proposed by either Jensen or Kiousis to measure the level of interactivity of numerous objects and systems. Furtheron Manovich (as well as Scherp et. al. and Sundar et. al.) points out the lack of knowledge and reasearch in the field of user experience gained through interactivity.

Manovich explains the development of interactivity through classical and modern art that in his word were already interactive before the new media. Human mind used to “fill in” the missing parts of art works with fantasy and pictures based on previous personal experiences. Interactivity derived from the persons reaction to the piece made or installed by someone else. What happens with new media and technology is, that in many cases the person has an effect on the path the system takes, but any combination of paths is preprogrammed and designed. Few opportunities are left for the users own imagination or previous experience. (Manovich, L. 2005)

Interactivity User Experience

As mentioned earlier, Kiousis makes the distinction between the media and psychological aspects, Manovich points out the danger of “interpreting interactivity literally, equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object, at the sake of psychological interaction” (Manovich, L. 2005; p.71). The psychological aspect and user experience need more attention to reach the real understanding of interactivity.

The ability to measure user experience could help specify the success of interactive systems. In 2008, a foundation map was established, explaining basic differences between three application domains (media working environments, media enter-/edutainment and social media engagement) with respect to interaction and user experience gained from interaction. Five assessment metrics are information quality, presentation quality, ambience, interactivity and user experience and expectation. The results were not detailed but aimed at identifying key challenges and reaserch topics for the field. As a rather expected result the authors summed up that only applying user-centered approach helps develop multimedia applications meeting the users’ expectations. (Scherp, A., et al. 2008)

More specific attention towards theoretical understanding of the psychology of interactivity has been given lately. Sundar, Xu and Bellur explain the details of interactivity based on the traditional models of communication where the central elements are source, medium and message. All those contribute to user engagement with consequences for psychological outcomes — cognition, attitude and behavior. The constructed user-based guidelines for user interface designers are targeted to effective interactive user interface design. (Sundar, S., Xu, Q., Bellur, S., 2010)

Useful and Valid Nowadays

From the literature, one may see that more than two decades ago authors started turning their attention increasingly towards person and user criteria in the design process. And interactivity definitions from computer science and design viewpoint became more user-based (Kiousis, S. 2002). The trend has become a must today and still forms a crusial part of both research and development– the user-centered design issues, user experience and interaction design.

I find it inevitable that interactivity today is connected to new media and technologies, but agree strongly to the psychological and sociological side of it. The explication of the term “interactivity” in my opinion should start with psychological values – what is interactivity with no machine and technology – and then go on to the description of technology-mediated communication and others. All the proposed dimensions provide us with opportunity to measure the level and success of interactivity in modern systems.

Summary

Not wanting to underestimate the complexity and importance of the media and technological side, I find the psychological aspects of interactivity truely facsinating. To my contentment I found many interesting research papers (not all mentioned here) of the field. Still the sources used for this task have not reached a satisfactory explication of the psychological user experience side of interactivity, which to me adds the most value to the system.

It seems to me (not proved ) that the experience one may encounter through interactivity in “traditional” settings is offering more mental pleasure than in new media setting. Probably while the former entails more personal touch. But surely it is a question of “taste”, as someone else may find technologically prepared event more appealing.

The short research done to find out classifications and definitions offered for the concept of “interactivity” gave good insight to the field. It became clear that both technical and communicational sides are better documented and systemized than the user perception and experience of interactivity. The ideas of Manovich gave the most inspiration as well as ideas for further reaserch.

 

References:

Kiousis, S. (2002). Interactivity: a concept explication. New Media & Society, SAGE Publications, Vol 4(3):355–383. Online

Jensen, J. F. (1998). Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication studies. Nordicom Review, 19(1), 185-204. Online

Jensen, J. F. (2008) The concept of interactivity — revisited: four new typologies for a new media landscape. Proceeding uxTV 2008. Online

Manovich, L. (2005) The language of new media. P. 70-74. Online

Scherp, A., Nack, F., Nahrstedt, K., Inoue, M., Girgensohn, A., Henrich, A., Sandhaus, P., Thieme, S., Zhou, M. (2008). Interaction and user experiences with multimedia technologies: Challenges and future topics. Proceeding HCC ’08. Online

Sundar, S., Bellur, S. (2010). Designing interactivity in media interfaces: A communications perspective. CHI 2010. Online