Task 5: From interaction to interactivity, from sociology to informatics (article 1)

New Interactive Environments

What is interactivity?

In computer science, interactive refers to software which accepts and responds to input from humans; for example, data or commands. By comparison, noninteractive programs operate without human contact; examples of these include compilers and batch processing applications.

Interactivity is seen as a key association with new media as it basically sets apart the 'old' and new medias. Old media could only offer a sit-back type interaction, whereas new media is much more engaging to their audiences. Technologies such as DVDs and digital TV are classic examples of interactive media devices, where a user can control what they watch and when. However, the Internet has become the prime model of an interactive system. Users can become fully immersed in their experiences by viewing material, commenting on it and then actively contributing to it.

Designers have often wondered about the secret ingredient to make a website appealing. The combination of design and functionality is something every designer wishes to implement in a site. Many successful websites have one main secret ingredient, not every designer is aware about. That element is website interactivity.

Some examples of great interactivity websites
Left: Starbucks Coffee at Home. Right: Square Circle (Creative Agency)

Literature review

Jensen, J.F. (1998). Interactivity: Tracking a New Concept in Media and Communication Studies.

When Jensen wrote his review on interactivity as a new concept in media and communications studies in 1998, the term 'interactivity' (along with 'multimedia', 'hypermedia', 'media convergence', 'digitization', 'information superhighway', etc), was presumably among the words surrounded by the greatest amount of hype. At the same time, it seemed relatively unclear just what 'interactivity' and 'interactive media' meant, which made it one of the media community's most used buzzwords – to the extent where the meaning was watered down in daily usage.

However, one thing was sure. The concept appeared loaded with positive connotations along the lines of high tech, technological advancement, hypermodernity and futurism, along the lines of individual freedom of choice, personal development, self determination – and even along the lines of folksy popularization, grassroots democracy, and political independence.

Jensen made an attempt to track the concept of 'interactivity' and to suggest a new definition for the much-hyped but underdefined phenomenon, trying to overcome the blind spot at a time when most of the media handbooks remained silent on it. Referring to the matrix with four principally different communication patterns (transmission, consultation, conversation, registration), developed by Bordewijk and Kaam in 1986, Jensen came to a conclusion that the new media could hardly be described using traditional one way communication models and terminology. After a long, at some point confusing, analysis over the meaning of the concept of 'interactivity' in three main academic fields (sociology, communication studies and informatics), followed by 1- to n-dimensional models of the same concept from a number of different authors, he returned to the above mentioned matrix to build his suggestion on it.

According to Jensen, there appears to be a particular difference in interactivity which consists of a choice from a selection of available information content, interactivity which consists of producing information via input to a system, and interactivity which consists of the system's ability to adapt and respond to a user. Based on the four patterns, he suggested different – mutually independent – dimensions of interactivity and defined it as a measure of a media's potential ability to let the user exert an influence on the content and/or form of the mediated communication. Since consultational and transmissional interactivity both concern the availability of choice (respectively with and without a request) it is possible to represent them within the same dimension of selective interactivity. The four types of interactivity (transmissional, consultational, conversational and registrational) can then be presented in a 3-dimensional graphic model – an 'interactivity cube' with results in 12 different types of interactive media. Jensen admitted it was not a complete resolution, in the sense of finding the ultimate definition for 'interactivity', yet he had made a contribution toward a hopefully greater understanding of the meaning of 'interactivity'.

A dozen years later, we have, with one accord, agreed that interactive power of computer and communications technology, computer-enabled consumer devices (the possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation) and most importantly the Internet (which is why we talk a lot about website interactivity) forms the core of new media. In fact, this is what distinguishes new media from traditional media – the dynamic life of the content and its interactive relationship with the consumer. This dynamic life moves, breathes and flows with pulsing excitement in real time, which makes new media (and therefore also interactivity) a concept hard to track. What was new yesterday, or today, won't be new tomorrow.