• Chapter 1 of The Art of Interactive Design

I agree with the author that the word ‘Interactive’ is a word which is overused but not well understood. I think recently there are many words that we use commonly because they are in trend but we don’t know the meaning very well. Even when I want to describe ‘Interactive Media’ major, I get stuck trying to explain interactive part. I feels natural to say it but when I need to explain it  in detail, I can’t. When giving a description for ‘interactive’, he mentions that books, films and many other things are not interactive. I believe that he has  a point but during summer a film on Netflix was released, it is called ‘Bandersnatch’. And it is an interactive movie where you get to choose how to proceed. It gives you some freedom to make decisions. Maybe it is not fully interactive on a scale but compared to other movies it is. I don’t think drawing such hard boundaries is the right approach. If we try, we can come up with ideas to make a lot of things more interactive.

• Chapter 1 of The Design of Everyday Things, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things

I found this reading super relatable in many aspects. It is so true that just for the sake of doing something ‘new’ or ‘original’, we don’t think about how user friendly it is. I remember when I was young, we bought a brand new washing machine. When it finally arrived to the house, I was trying to open the front of the machine and it was extremely weird. I ended up breaking the machine while trying to open it on the first day. My mom was furious, looking back at it now, I realize it was not my fault:) Maybe a little…

My mom studied endustrial desing so while I was growing up these types of chats were part of our daily lives. Like how user friendly a desing is, or how it could be improved. All the things that the chapter was talking about felt quite familiar.