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Interaction Design
I have a friend who chooses restaurants based on their ambiance. In Sterling's own words, "If I only wanted good food, I'd stay home and cook it myself." A restaurant's appeal is based on more than merely the quality of its food-at least if you go to dine rather than eat. Interaction to a website is what ambiance is to a restaurant. It is probably the most important aspect to websites.
Building interesting, valuable experiences-in other words, interactivity- is what interactive media is all about. Now, this medium is so new, that it's difficult to find good examples, but trust me, it's what you need to shoot for. If you care about attracting an audience, keeping them, and having them return, give them something to do that is useful, personal, and fun.
There are six major components of interactivity:
Feedback
Control
Creativity
Productivity
Communications
Adaptivity
There are actually more, but these are the most important and are more than enough to chew on for now. But how do these interactive components translate into activities on the Internet? Here are just a few examples of interactive experiences people have built:
- Commerce Systems
- Communities
- Online Customer Service
- Search functions
- Notification Agents
- Product Delivery over the Net (in the case of software)
- Corporate Information
- Product Information
- Events and promotions
- Personalized and Customized Services and Information
- Online Applications and Online Ventures (such as directories, dating and match-making services, etc.)
- Intranets
- Extranets
- (to name just a few)
Build as many of these into your sites as you can, particularly anything that allows communications and adaptive (or custom) experiences, as these make for the most valuable experiences. Unfortunately, there are no off-the-shelf tools for these and no recipes to follow so they require invention (which is more time and money consuming), but they are well worth it.
Any experience that allows the audience (your customer) control is a good thing. Sure, if there aren't interested in taking the initiative, then you need to be ready with an alternative, but if they are antsy about anything, turn over the reins to them. Control will become much more important as the technology of the Net evolves-with Java, Shockwave, etc. Remember, if all your audience can do is sit back and watch, they will probably turn off their computer and go watch television-or at least, go to another site. Give them a chance to control what they see and do and say-and how. Disclose to them what is going on so that they know where they are and what is happening.
Examples: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus (Java required)
Mousejam
Smoking Gun
Glassdog
Dextro (requires Shockwave)
EarthbrowserYugop
Custom Tattoo Maker (Flash required)
Inxight Site Lens
Experimental Command-Line Interface
Shiseido JAVA Calendars (Java required)Guess what? Creativity and Productivity are really the same thing. They both have to do with creating experiences that allow the audience to do something or to make something at your site. That's what humans are good at: creating things, whether for themselves or for others. That's why hobbies and work abound. If you haven't had too many people drop by or return, maybe because there isn't anything to do at your site but read. As Gertrude Stein said about Oakland: "There's no there there."
There aren't a lot of good examples yet, but there are a few. Some are frivolous and fun, others are more "useful" and productive. All point the way to an Internet that prods people to participate. Don't let anyone tell you that people aren't ready to participate or that they don't have the "skills" to cook-up their own content. People do this everyday already. They work, play, talk, share, kvetch, and dream and they are interested in doing all of these things online as well as in there realspace lives.
What do people love to do the most? OK, maybe second to eating: why talking of course. People love to talk-no matter what they tell you. They may not like to talk in public or to large groups, but everyone basically likes to share their thoughts with someone. Telecommunications companies make so much money because humans love to talk.
Anything you can do to allow your audience to talk to others, listen, identify themselves, share things, and tell their own stories will make your site more successful and may begin to build a community. It may be as simple as creating or linking to discussion groups (like USENET), bulletin boards, IRC chat channels, list serv mechanisms, or merely giving them feedback forms, and email access to you or each other.
This is actually somewhat easy. Instead of developing complex ways for people to talk to a machine, simply provide a conduit for people to talk to each other-the conversation will be richer and the overhead simpler.
If you're interested in starting a community, this is the way to start. You only need four things to start a community:
- a way for people to talk to each other
- a way for people to consistently identify and describe themselves and each other (whether anonymously or not)
- a topic around which to start a conversation
- audience-generated content
That doesn't sound like too much, now does it?
Lastly, the most valuable interactive experiences are those that are adaptive. This means that they change for each member of the audience to meet their specific needs, interests, skills, and behaviors. This is certainly not easy, but any way you can build unique experiences for your audiences will seem more interactive. If your experiences can respond to time and place (theirs and yours) will also be more interactive.
Location, Location, Location
Where are your customers? If they come to you from Hong Kong aren't there things you would tell them differently than if they came from Albania? Or Paris? Or Columbia? If not, then maybe you should look again at your business. If so, then send them different pages based on their domain extension. Do they seem like they're having trouble finding something? Then ask them if they need help and offer some. Does it look like they know exactly what they want? Then, by all means, get out of their way and let them speed along.
While some of the first truly adaptive experiences may have been scavenger hunts, there is now a wealth of individualized, personalized content and interactions on the web: everything from banking to NEWS. These companies are finding that serving people as individuals makes for not only a good site, but good business.
What Time is it?
Another way to build interactive experiences are online events. Those, in fact that respond to the time of day, the place, and the people there and out on the Net are the most interesting. Unfortunately, these are temporary, transient experiences and are inactive once they are completed.
Note: for more on interaction design, see the vivid insight piece, Unified Field Theory of Design
Examples:
My Yahoo
CNN Custom News
Bank of America's Build Your Own Bank
YodleeFor these last issues, you are on your own. This is where you need to be the creative, ingenious, forward-thinking people you were brought-up to be. What the Net and Web are to be is little like it is now and the only way from here to there is to dare to create interesting experiences and innovative ideas. If you're not up to that task, than you're working the wrong medium. You should get out now and look for a more stable, well-understood one, like television or magazines. However, if you're not adverse to a little challenge-OK, a big challenge, the kitchen is the place for you. You'll need a lot of ingredients (like fresh content), some tried-and-true tools (like Photoshop), and a lot of old-fashioned ingenuity. Oh, and a dash of garlic never hurt.
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Copyright 1994 Nathan Shedroff
