Week1

What is interaction

The concept of interaction has existed for a long time before the public starts to pay attention on it. And the understanding of interaction has been discussed changed or even, as Chris Crawford mentioned in his article “The term interactivity is overused and underunderstood.” Many people tend to think interactivity as a fancy word and use it as a wrapping paper for some old product without thinking about the meaning of it. I agreed with him that there’s no clear ideas or definitions of the concept of interactivity, interactivity happens in our daily life, every second. Simply as say hello to the doorman, swab the subway card every morning, tap ID to a security system and of course with all the digital tools, such as unlock your iphone with your finger prints. Since we are surrounded by the technology, physical interaction with all the digital tools becomes very important.

At the beginning of Bret Victor’s article, the video generated a possible future for us, and as the article said, human hands become a key tool in the interaction. In my opinion, the essential element for a good physical interaction is capability. As Bret said “We live in a three-dimensional world. Our hands are designed for moving and rotating objects in three dimensions, for picking up objects and placing them over, under, beside, and inside each other. No creature on earth has a dexterity that compares to ours.” Our body served as the medium between us and the world, not only our hands, but also the other part of our physical body also served as “tools” for interaction, such as our eyes (google glass). Therefore the understanding of our physical capability is very important and helpful for developing the future of interactivity.