The term interactivity does get bounced around quite a bit. One thing pointed out in Sally McMillan’s article was that interactivity will be constantly evolving within the evolution of the technology. It is a weird thought, because everything that is interactive today will more than likely be outdated tomorrow. Today’s interactive technologies only help to progress the next steps in interactivity. One great example of this are video games. What was groundbreaking in the 1980s such as Pac-Man or the Atari system, is considered so out-of-date in today’s time of the Wii interactive system and the new XBox Kinetic, where the user is not just mashing buttons, but is controlling game play through actual real-time physics.
One definition breaks the concept of interactivity into two parts. One being the message and how it is related and the other part is surrounded by the audience. I never really thought about interactivity being defined by the audience exposure. I assumed that the audience will always interact with something no matter what it is and I definitely never thought about different levels of audience interaction. There are high and low levels, that can vary based on the message. However,I would agree that a third part is needed and that’s the technological side to the interaction.
The technological piece of the definition determines the levels of interaction within the audience. If you were to have a puppet show, there is a certain level of interaction between the audience watching in real time. Now put that puppet show on YouTube and allow for the audience to comment or pose questions. All of a sudden the audience has a voice in something and that is an important part of interactivity.
There needs to be the ability to give the audience a “voice”. They can choose to engage or participate at any level, but in my mind, interactivity has to allow the audience to have a vested interest and voice in the matter. Engagement with some product is fine, but the chance to have a two-way conversation between the message and audience AND the technology and the audience is a needed point to the definition. When I mention voice, I do not only mean a comment page or twitter account. The audience can make their thoughts heard through other means and can have a conversation amongst themselves as well.
The evolving nature of interactivity makes the notion of a solid, concrete definition hard to put in place. I would think that the definition of transportation 100 years ago has changed with the change in the actual ability to transport people and things.
So for my definition of interactivity there are 4 pieces…the message, the technology, the audience and the conversation that takes place between the message, the technology and the audience. Those 3 parts would have the ability to vary and have different levels, but they must all allow for the audience to have a voice. And for some reason, it makes me think of this Marx Brother’s sketch.
