Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the barrier until you're blue in the face, but it's only when you traverse it
that things get “real.”
Wardrip-Fruin (2009) suggests an alternative to sensory immersion as a
way to intensify the experience of interactivity. He argues for “systems that
more clearly communicate their structures to audiences.” In what he calls
“the
SimCity
effect,” the experience of interaction is enhanced, paradoxi-
cally, when players incrementally build “a model of the system's internal
processes based on experimentation.” This model brings players' initial ex-
pectations into line with the capabilities of the game, dissolving an impor-
tant barrier to successful (pleasurable) interaction.
The experience of interactivity is a “thresholdly” phenomenon, and it
is also highly context-dependent. The search for a defi nition of interactiv-
ity diverts our attention from the real issue: How can humans participate
as agents within representational contexts? Actors know a lot about that,
and so do children playing make-believe. Buried within us in our deepest
playful instincts, and surrounding us in the cultural conventions of theatre,
fi lm, and narrative, are the most profound and intimate sources of knowl-
edge about interactive representations. A central task is to bring those re-
sources to the fore and to use them in the design of interactive systems.
So now we have at least two reasons to consider theatre as a promis-
ing foundation for thinking about and designing human-computer expe-
riences. First, there is signifi cant overlap in the fundamental objective of
the two domains—that is, representing action with multiple agents. Sec-
ond, theatre suggests the basis for a model of human-computer activity
that is familiar, comprehensible, and evocative. The rest of this topic will
explore some of the theoretical and practical aspects of theatre that can
be directly applied to the task of designing human-computer experiences.
But there are a few more stones to be turned in arranging the groundwork
for this discussion.
Because theatre is a form of entertainment, many people see it as fundamen-
tally “non-serious.” I have found in conversations with computer-science-
oriented developers that there is high resistance to a theatrical approach to
designing human-computer activity on the grounds that it would somehow
trivialize “serious” applications. Graphic designers undoubtedly have had
to wrestle with the same sort of criticism, where design is seen, not as a
task of representation, but merely one of decoration. Decoration is suspect
