During the group project, my definition of interaction was mainly influenced by Zach Lieberman’s definition. In the post, I defined interaction as “the occurrence of entities reacting and responding to one another.” After doing my midterm project as well as experiencing other people’s projects, my definition of interaction has become much more relaxed. While my midterm project fitted my group project definition by having two entities (the user and the game) respond to each other’s actions, it made me reflect about other ways of interacting, particularly internal experiences, as well as made me reflect why is my definition of interaction defined as plural, “entities.” My definition has evolved slightly to one that includes interaction that involves with the action between the internal and the external.
One project that doesn’t align with my definition of interaction is this haptic navigation device called momo. While it uses touch to guide you through the world, I think it is less interactive (to say the least) because it merely guides the user through touch. The user doesn’t necessarily communicate to the device, but instead the devices guides you to a destination, similarly to a G.P.S. but through touch. However, by changing one of the senses, I don’t think this aligns with my definition of interaction because there is not back and forth feedback directly through the external or internal. While it does tell you where to go via the vibrations, it doesn’t react very much to how it communicates to you, and you don’t necessarily need to react to it.
Two more projects I looked into was the Scribb and the Thinking Cap. These two projects are much more dynamic than the previous project. Scribb is more interactive to me because you get to draw and use the cursor to move through worlds. You’re able to communicate it to different ways and the game will respond in different ways with how you draw and where you guide the mouse. This interaction is much more explicit and applies to my external idea of interaction.
Another project I looked into was from MIT Media Lab. While this isn’t necessarily an interactive project, but a research study using a sorting hat to study the well-being, resilience, and self-esteem to the student wearing it, I think it still is an interactive project because of its dynamics. Like Scribb, there are many ways to change the way the hat and the child responds. It uses an internal experience (mental processes and brain patterns) to “tell” the student what they are thinking about and what kind of self-esteem boosting phrases to use.
These two projects inspire my final project because of its dynamic manner in which one can interact with it, as well as the almost natural and personal quality each project can have. For my final project, I want to challenge myself to make something that has both meaning and naturalness in reality, but also challenging me to create a project that has flexibility in its interaction. I think, for me, interaction involves some kind of communication that can be very changeable and dynamic. Minimal change in the response of the device is less interactive to me and one sided if the user’s actions don’t affect the device very much. In my definition of interaction, I also believe one can interaction via internally and externally, but ultimately the results must be visible in reality (through the device, for example). All in all, interaction is the visible occurrence of reacting and responding dynamically between two entities, either external or internal.