During the group project, I defined interaction as “a cyclic process in which two purposeful actors alternately receive, process and respond to actions or information”.In addition, I emphasized on the significance of processing, as people naturally perceive reception and respond as essential parts of interaction, while processing is more often overlooked. In the past few weeks, we’ve gained a deeper understanding of interaction through classes and practice, and my definition of interaction has evolved as well. I still agree with my initial definition mostly but learned from the experience developing my midterm project, as well as other people’s work, I now think interaction not only happens between two actors but also among three or more. When more roles are involved, interactions happen simultaneously and affect each other. Moreover, during an interaction, actors respond accordingly based on the commands and the ways they process. For example, pushing different buttons or for different times will lead to different results, and I think it is also a feature of interaction.

Project that aligns:

This project consists of a cube of mirrors that spans and redirect light and sound based on the movement and positions of the people surrounding it. The project aligns with my definition because it senses the surrounding people, processes all the information and spans the mirrors to reflect light and sounds accordingly. It also well presents the changes I made to my definition. The whole cube interacts with multiple people at the same time by including all positions into calculations to decide how to span the mirrors. As a result, each individual’s movement will affect others’ perceptions of the light and sound as well.

Volume – Interactive cube of responsive mirrors that redirects light and sound

Project that does not align:

This project contains three objects that were designed to encourage people to reduce the unnecessary time they spent on phones, and I’m particularly interested in the third one. It is designed for restaurants. Customers can put phones on the device and charge them, but they cannot use their phones at the same time. The device will record the time and customers can print out the percentage of time spent on the phone during the meal. I think the project does not align with my definition of interaction. It does interact to some extent, but the degree of interaction is relatively low. Its only responses are turning lights on when the phone is plugged in and showing the record time. It only has one single input, so the process part is not emphasized much.

Connected Tools – Devices that mediate smartphone consumption

 

Derived from research and my own experience developing interactive projects, my definition for interaction is: a cyclic process in which two or more purposeful actors alternately or simultaneously receive, process and respond accordingly to different actions or information. And based on the statement Crawford put forward in his article “The Art of Interactive Design” that interactivity has degrees. I think it is important for interaction to respond differently according to the inputs and the way it is designed to process the inputs so that it’s not merely, for example, turning on and off the lights. And it has to be in a cyclic process, each part alternately receives and gives out information or interacts with multiple actors at the same time, and the response could be diverse and always in change.