PREPARATORY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

First, I conduct some investigation on two successful interactive projects and how they inspire me on what I am going to build for the final project. The first one is the “Iris” built by the HYBE Studio. According to HYBE, the Iris installation “uses the passage of ambient light, not the emission of light itself.” This one will show a mirror image of any visitor walking by in front of it. I find it a very successful interactive project for the following reasons. The first reason is that it well embodies the idea that users play an important role in how the project behaves. In other words, users become participants of this artwork because their behavior influences how the project looks like. The second reason is the way the project responses actually catches the users’ eye. At least, personally speaking, the project will encourage me to interact with it multiple times. I am curious about how it responds according to my body movement and whether it was possible to catch the movement of me and my friends. Finally, it is a good place to take a picture and then post it on other social platforms. For those reasons, I believe it’s successful. For me, it inspires me on how to design the interaction user-friendly. As a designer, I don’t want to make the interaction part super complex. If it’s too complicated, it may take users several minutes to figure out how to interact with it and thus, they will run out of patience and is no longer willing to spend more time enjoying the interacting part.

The project is the interactive wall built by Wildbytes. The working mechanism is also very simple. Users can stand right in front of the camera and the cameras will monitor their actions. If they do actions like the iconic movement of superman being ready to fly, their faces will appear on the wall, along with the animation of they flying in the superman’s costume. And if they take other actions, they will have different feedbacks on the wall, such as the x-ray vision and super strength. I really like this one’s interaction part. It uses the fame of superheroes to make the interaction very straightforward for most of the visitors and the feedback is also very eye-catching. The animation on the wall encourages people who are passing by also waits for a moment and then joins the project. This is also the effect I would like to reach in the final project. I would like to find a way to make the result of the interaction appealing enough to attract more users and then encourage them to interact with the project more often.

At last, I am going to provide some personal thoughts on what contributes to a successful interactive project. According to what Ernest Edmonds has written in “Art, Interaction and Engagement”, the interactive projects’ feature is defined as “All of the conditions of the dynamic passive category apply with the added factor that the human ‘viewer’ has an active role in influencing the changes in the art object.”(3) I agree with him on this point. The most important part of an interactive project is getting users involved. In other words, is to make users part of the creator of this project. To do that, an appealing outcome after they interact with it is of great importance. To accomplish that, I would suggest that both feedbacks and “interaction was continuous and fluid”.(Ernest 6) Like the second interactive project which I demonstrate above, the interaction part is the user doing different movements in front of the camera. This is a continuous and fluid process because it doesn’t require the user to hold a certain gesture so that the camera can take the picture of it or something like that. Users can enjoy the freedom of taking any actions and they will be reflected on the wall. In this way, I would like to define this project as user-friendly and that’s the key thing I think what contributes to a successful interactive project. In my midterm and group project, I also learn the lesson that finding the right target audience is also of great importance. I think this can also be included as the definition of user-friendly. How to make the project look obvious to attract a certain group of people is also a question I have been thinking about. If possible, I try to avoid just set up a signal, saying that the only user satisfying those requirements can enjoy this project. Instead, I want to make the project self-evident, maybe the appearance of it will attract a certain group of users. In this way, it will prevent the embarrassment caused by merely posting a message. And thus this will encourage more people to come to interact with it.

In conclusion, I think making the whole process user-friendly is of great importance to make a successful interactive project.