My Definition for Interaction:
From my perspective, ‘Interaction’ should be defined as a phenomenon that meets the following criteria:
- Involves two or more actors.
- Includes reciprocal processes of receiving information, processing information, and giving out feedbacks, despite the form of information (verbal, physical, visual, analog, digital etc.)
- Could be carried out without prior interpretations.
Two Projects I Chose:
The project I chose that I think aligns the above definition is called Ethical Things, which is an ‘ethical fan’ that tries to use the resources on a crowd-sourcing website every time it faces some ethical dilemmas. This is how it looks:
The other project that does not fully fits in my definition for ‘interaction’ is ‘F3.’ It is a 3D design software based on Signed Distance Function.
The Relevance of ‘Ethical Things’ to ‘Interaction’
In Week 1’s reading ‘The Art of Interactive Design‘ by Crawford, he defined interactivity as
A cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak.
However, as you can see in my own definition for ‘interaction’, I changed ‘two actors’ into ‘two or more actors’ and this modification partly originates from Ethical Things. In its demonstration video, this equipment needs the presence of at least two people in order to fall into an ethic dilemma. If we count the device itself in, the total number of actors will turn to three. Although the number of actors in this project does not follow Crawford’s definition, this did not hurt the interactivity between the device and humans. Ethical Things is able to absorb the information from both objects as its input, find a way to process their information, and give reactions that would affect both users.
What is more, at the input stage, Ethical Things gathers information from different dimensions. After the two people have sat down, it will automatically detect their body conditions. Based on that, the users can adjust the ethical standards using the rotary knobs and switches on either side of the device. Finally, Ethical Things will go through a crowd-sourcing website for the best solution. Considering the variety of information Ethical Things processed in this process, in my definition of ‘interaction’, I built upon the criterion appeared in Igoe and O’Sullivan’s definition and added that no matter what form of information is involved, as long as it has gone through the process of input, processing, output, we should recognize it as meeting the criterion.
Last week, we read Tom Igoe’s article ‘Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage Then Shut Up and Listen‘. The core idea of this article is that
Once you’ve made your initial statement by building the thing or the environment and designing its behaviors, shut up.
In my opinion, Ethical Things is very easy to use. The designer of this equipment would not need to explain too much about how this device functions and what it can be used for. The process of Ethical Things making decisions in front of two people is pure interaction.
The Relevance of ‘F3’ to ‘Interaction’
I think the project ‘F3’ somehow did not fully meet the definition I gave out above. Through in its interactive process, there are 2 actors (computer/software and the user). We could also witness steps of input, processing, and output. However, this project itself is not self-explanatory enough. First of all, as programming software, people without previous experience of computer programming would find it relatively hard to create the 3D structures of their own.
Meanwhile, even for professional users, they did not seem to get the essence of this software. On the Mac App Store page for F3, the one and only review by Mattx09 says that
Lack of tutorial and step by step sample on how to use it. Normally you can find videos on youtube for everything but not for this. It’s a waste of money 19.99£ and I will try to get a refund for it.
If the threshold of interacting with this software is high, I don’t think it has fully met the standard of ‘interactivity.’ Interactive arts should be as accessible to everyone as possible and should not require very high levels of professional knowledge or detailed tutorials of any kind.
Our Group’s Interactive Device
Our group would like to design a device that is close to people. In other words, there will be some scenarios that require frequent use of our machine in the future. After passing the idea of an intelligent haircutter and dream maker, we formed the idea of ‘Sfeeder’, an interactive human feeding machine designed to help those who are too busy to have their meals in the year 2119. There are two actors – the feeder and the user. During the interactive process, input refers to the verbal order given by the user, processing involves understanding the users’ order, detecting and locating the food on table, and output is the result of sending the food to the users’ mouth. All its functions are based on voice control so the users would not need to spend extra time to learn about how to use it. There are some elements of our device that resonates with Ethical Things. The designer of Ethical Things mentioned that while they were thinking about the device, they came up with the following question:
If a “smart” coffee machine knows about its user’s heart problems, should it accept giving him a coffee when he requests one?
This is a dilemma ‘Sfeeder’ would encounter as well. When the feeding machine detected that the user would like to consume types of food that may bring potential health risks, should the feeder still execute the order? In the end, we decided that a machine, after all, should obey to what the user said. Although it can give health advice to users, those suggestions should never bother the user and ruin the overall experience. What is more, to create a feeling of intimacy, we designed the entire device in the form of people even if the function could be replaced by an mechanical arm. The hair and face on Sfeeder is expected to make the users interact with it more often.