Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The Meaning of Interactivity—Some Proposals for Definitions and Measures

Is it possible to define interaction and interactivity? And is it possible to measure it in some way? My colleague Lars-Erik Janlert and I have developed some concepts and definitions that we believe can help us answer these questions. In our article (that you can download here)

Lars-Erik Janlert & Erik Stolterman (2017) The Meaning of Interactivity—Some Proposals for Definitions and Measures, Human–Computer Interaction, 32:3, 103-138, DOI: 10.1080/07370024.2016.1226139

we present our work. [Even though this article is recently published, some of the materials in the article has been reworked and further developed in our new book. "Things that keep us busy -- the elements of interaction" (MIT Press, 2017). ]

What I like about this work is that we take the question "what is interaction" seriously and in detail try to define it, or at least frame it, in a way that makes sense and also makes it usable. I know that the way we do it seems strange to some (we have already heard that), but even in those cases, it seems as if our attempt opens up for new questions and invites to a conversation. And this is really what I think our field needs, we need some serious efforts and attempts to carefully frame and define what interaction is since it is our core object of study.

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