interaction and narrative: designing for a new user context

The audience for an interactive object is not in a controlled environment like a cinema.

Your audience may be:

in offices
at home
simultaneously checking email
at the kitchen table
sitting behind the bedroom door
surrounded by kids
chatting with co-workers
walking down the street
in a cafe

Notes

Because of its history and strong relationship with the workplace, the main use of the internet is for information retrieval – people go online to get information.

People access the internet for pleasure at lunchtime and in idle moments. At home people have their computers set up in awkward places that suffice as a home office, in the corner of bedrooms, at a small table in the living room, near to a phoneline behind a door.

The range of contexts expands as the network becomes more pervasive – access to the network becomes embedded in devices that before may have been static or passive. Creating a story that works across the set-top TV box, the Playstation2, the fax machine, the Java mobile phone, the instant messenger client, the browser and the handheld organiser is going to be an immensely difficult but rewarding challenge.

A new Context

Notes