Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Engagement is fundamental to dramatic interaction. It has both cognitive
and emotional components. It implies sustained attention as well as a de-
gree of emotional involvement that is shaped as the plot unfolds. Why
should all human-computer activities be engaging? What is the nature of
engagement, and what is its value? What can designers do to guarantee
that it occurs?
Engagement, as I use the concept in this topic, is similar in many ways
to the theatrical notion of the “willing suspension of disbelief,” a concept
introduced by early 19th-century critic and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
15
It is the state of mind that one must attain in order to enjoy a representa-
tion of an action. Coleridge believed that any idiot could see that a play on
a stage was not real life (Plato would have disagreed with him, as do those
in whom fear is induced by any new representational medium, but that
is another story). He noticed that, in order to enjoy a play, one must tem-
porarily suspend (or attenuate) one's knowledge that it is “pretend.” One
does this “willingly” in order to experience other emotional responses as a
result of viewing the action. When the heroine is threatened, we feel a kind
of fear for and with her that is recognizable as fear, but different from the
fear we would feel if we were tied to the railroad tracks ourselves.
Pretend-
ing that the action is real
affords us the thrill of fear;
knowing that the action
is pretend
saves us from the pain of fear. Furthermore, our fear is fl avored
by the delicious expectation that the young lady will be saved in a heroic
manner—an emotional response that derives from knowledge about the
form
of melodrama.
The phenomenon that Coleridge described can be seen to occur almost
identically in drama and computer games, where we feel for and with the
characters (including our
selves
as characters) in very similar ways.
Ye s
,
someone might cry,
but manuscripts and spreadsheets aren't pretend!
Here we
must separate the activity from its artifacts. The
representation
of a manu-
script or spreadsheet as we manipulate it on the screen is in fact pretend,
as compared to physical artifacts like data fi les (in memory or on a stor-
age medium) and hard copy. The artifacts are real (as are actors, lighting
instruments, and scenery in a play), but the rules involved in working with
the
representations
of dramatic actions or interactions are distinct from the
15. For an analysis and thorough bibliography of Coleridge's criticism, see
Literary Criticism:
Pope to Croce
, pp. 221-239.
