Researching Documentation–Blog 2

     After reading the three articles from both books and websites, I would like to generate the main ideas of the three authors and come up with my own understanding of what is interactivity. In the article “The Art of Interactive Design Brief”, the author defined interactivity as a cyclist process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak. In other words, the process is that one actor say something to another actor, and the second actor will pay attention to the new information and will try to remember and digest it, and then he/she will react to it. Just as described in my first blog, this process is very similar to the process of how the current flows in the circuits. The author’s another opinion about the current interactivity is that while interactivity has emerged, it was still simple. He classifies the current level of interactivity as low, medium and high. Also, from “Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen” I notice that the main perspective of Tom Igoe is “Don’t interpret your own work.” What he means is that when an interactive designer makes a product, just show it to his/her audience, don’t tell them what they need to do. As a result, different people will react and respond differently to the designs. I agree with Crawford that “the key point about the interactive process: There are two actors, not one.” Also, I believe that it’s important to “Let the audience listen to your work by taking it in through their senses.” In conclusion, to combine these two major views together, what interactivity means to me is that there is no fixed definition of what interactivity is，whatever delivered, understood, and responded between two objects (including human and non-human) can be called interactivity. Particularly, the receiving part of the two objects may understand and respond to the deliverer uniquely based on their own experiences and features.

     Example 1: The first interactive design I find is these musical stairs in Brussels. When people walking up and down through these stairs, the piano-like stairs will make the sound of a real piano: Do Re Mi Fa So La Si… So when someone is walking on it, the stairs will make beautiful sound. Also, some people are interested in playing some simple songs and performing on the musical stairs. I think this design can be aligns with my definition about interactivity. When different people are walking, it has great possibilities that different music will be played. Even if people are just walking through, the time when their feet touch the stairs is different, and the music they create will be slightly different. In short, everyone will play his unique music.

Example 2: This is a 350ml automatic induction soap dispenser. At first I thought for a long time what so called “interactive” product was actually not an “interactive” one in my definition. Suddenly I recall that in some department stores, the soap dispenser in the restrooms are automatic ones. If you put your hands under the machine, it will push out an adequate amount of soap on your hand. This is certainly one example of interactive design. However, according to my own definition, different people will receive different responses from the interactive design. But here the dispenser is programmed by a single instruction and will react to different people the same. As a result, I don’t think this is a product that aligns with my perspective of “interactive” product.