Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Artistry and structure are interdependent; both must be present if beauty
is to be the result. Perhaps more important in this stage of the evolution of
computer-based media is the fact that artistic sensibility should drive the
notion of
desired experience
, from which the design of technological compo-
nents must be derived.
Human-computer interaction is like drama in the sense that the prin-
cipal designer (or playwright) is not the only human source of artistry in
the completed whole. In theatre, the director, actors, designers, and tech-
nicians who are involved in rendering a performance all make contribu-
tions that require artistry. In human-computer interaction, there may be
a legion of programmers who have designed and architected programs
on which a given kind of action depends, graphic designers who create
images and animation, wordsmiths who authored text (or text-generating
algorithms), and so on. A fundamental but sometimes overlooked source
of human artistry is the people who actually engage in the designed inter-
action; that is, the
interactors
.
Real-time human-computer interaction is a mediated collaboration between
designers and interactors. Mediation occurs through the unfolding of the
experience itself in terms of time-displaced collaboration or real-time inter-
vention by designers. The plot can be described, in retrospect, as the story
of the whole action that interactors tell themselves (in much the same way
as one remembers a fi lm or a day in the park). Wardrip-Fruin (2009) de-
fi nes interaction “as a change to the state of the work—for which the work
was designed—that comes from outside the work. Interaction takes place
through the surface of the work, resulting in change to its internal data and/
or processes.” Designers and interactors co-create the whole action in intri-
cate ways, even though they are not literally co-present. The fi nal form—the
element of plot—cannot be exclusively controlled by the designer; it will
also be shaped by the choices and actions of interactors. In this sense, the de-
signer loses a signifi cant measure of formal, top-down control as the interac-
tor's choices move the plot from possibility to probability to necessity—the
ending of the particular plot that has been created in a player's traversal of
a game (or the performance of an activity by a “user”) (see Figure 3.2). Un-
like branching tree structures, computationally intensive games may enable
player outcomes that the designers could not have foreseen. Such was the
