Designing for creative engagement
Section snippets
Modelling human experience in human–computer interaction
Studies of the aesthetics of HCI have parallels with interactive art studies, because they focus on users' perceptions and psychological states during experience. For example, Tractinsky and his collaborators studied users' perceived visual aesthetics of an interactive system, explored the relationship between aesthetics and usability, and claimed ‘What is beautiful is usable’ (Tractinsky et al., 2000). This claim initiated other discussions and studies reflecting similar issues and concerns.
Studying audience experience
Understanding and evaluating ‘interactive experience’ is of interest to HCI researchers and interaction designers. In the history of HCI, ‘interaction’ was primarily studied through effectiveness and efficiency of a system and has been measured by focusing on usability, user's understanding, the number of errors users make, and the amount of time required to complete a task. However task-oriented evaluation techniques do not always satisfy interactive art experience evaluation objectives.
A model of creative engagement
In this section we describe a model for active engagement with interactive systems, based on defining interactive experience as a transformative dialogue between the audience and the interactive (art) system. We identified cognitive components of interaction and used these as basic elements of the engagement model through studying the different art systems and different audiences. The engagement model represents ‘interaction modes’ and ‘interaction phases’ related to the participant's
Implications of the engagement model
Our studies of audience experience demonstrated that investigating temporal and sequential aspects of participant's thinking and behaviour is necessary for describing the dialogue between the art system (object) and the participant's internal world (self). The evolution of this dialogue along the timeline of an experience is represented with the interaction modes and phases in the Engagement Model (Figure 3). In this way, the model provides the interaction designer with an understanding of the
Conclusion
In this paper we described a model for active engagement with interactive artworks, based on defining interactive experience as a transformative dialogue between the audience and the artwork system. The model was developed as result of studying experiences of ten different art systems by different audiences over a three-year period. From our data collection and analysis, we identified interaction modes, phases and states of audience engagement and used these as basic elements of the engagement
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the artists, study participants and researchers of the Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology, Sydney and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The work was partly conducted within the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design, which is supported under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program.
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