Wiberg M. - The Interaction Society[c] Practice, Theories and Supportive Technologies (2005)(en)
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132 Jegers & Wiberg
•The level of difficulty in playing the game is by many test players experienced to be to low. The game is too easy and does not have an increasing level of difficulty, which was expected by many test players.
•Testplayersrevealfrustrationoveralackofconsistencywithotherarcade gamessimilartothisgame,likeforinstancethepossibilitytojumpon(and “kill”) “bad guys” in order to gain points.
•The lack of possibility to move information pop-up windows, revealed when questions concerning lasers are asked, frustrates the test players. The pop-up windows prevent the players from reading additional information placed in windows hidden by the pop-ups.
•Test players are frustrated over the fact that some objects, for instance a plastic road cone, do not work/behave as in real life. In real life a road cone could be pushed over, but in the game the player has to go around the cone since the cone behaves more like a fixed object (similar to, for instance, a fire post or a fence).
Design Implications
The above stated usability problems are examples of some of the issues identified in the expert walkthroughs and empirical evaluations of the game. In the focus group session, a thorough discussion of all previous sessions was conducted (see “Focus Group” above for description) and the general list of guidelines/implications below was created.
Further, design implications for this specific game was also put forward. These were also implemented in the design process. However, the specific implications are not further discussed here. The general list of guidelines/implications is listed below.
Earning and Losing Points
The overall scoring system should be clear, unambiguous and provide distinct feedback to the user concerning changes in the points scored or lost.
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Learning While Playing 133
•Positive audio and visual feedback should be provided to notify the user when points are scored.
•Negative audio and visual feedback should be provided to notify the user when points are lost due to some erroneous action performed by the user.
Scoring and Performance Feedback
The points should be summarized in a visible and easily interpreted counter, placed at a location in the environment according to conventions in the game genre. The meaning of the sum of points should be unambiguous and clearly indicate what kind of points that are represented, if there are multiple types of points that the user may score in the game.
Differences in Valuable Objects
There should be intuitive, easily understood representations of objects and actions that result in scoring points when performed. If there is various levels of points to be scored, the objects used to represent the different levels should be easy to interpret and clearly indicate the value of the specific point represented.
•Objects that represent major amounts of points should look more valuable than objects representing minor amounts of points.
Task Performance and Feedback
In order to achieve good gameplay and competition, a failure to achieve a certain task that successfully performed will result in a large amount of points scored should lead to the disappearance of the opportunity to score that particular set of points.
•If the user answers a question worth a large amount of points incorrectly, the opportunity to scorethat particular set of points by answeringthesame question again correctly should be suspended (the user should only have one opportunity to score each particular set of points).
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134 Jegers & Wiberg
Promoting Exploration
There should be “hidden points” in the game environment to reward the user when exploration of the environment is performed and to provide variation and discrimination in the overall performance of users considering points scored.
•A high score should require a performance above the normal from the user, in ordertomotivate theusers to engage inthe game and achieve good gameplay.
Game Objects’ Characteristics
The difference between objects that affect the gaming procedure and objects thatconstitutethebackgroundsurroundingsoftheenvironmentshouldbeclear andunambiguous.
•Objects that are “active” and may be manipulated or used by the user should distinguish themselves from the background and from other active objects.
•“Dangerous” objects that imply something negative for the user in the game should be represented in a way that clearly indicates their negative effect on the user’s performance.
•Positive objects that imply scoring points or help for the user in the game should indicate their positive attributes by their representation.
•Obstaclesintheenvironmentshouldclearlyandunambiguousindicatethat they are interferences that need to be worked around and not objects that may be manipulated by the user.
•The environment should demonstrate to the user where it is possible and not possible for the user’s agent or character to move around.
Real World Inheritance
When designing objects in the game environment, it is important to be aware of the conventions considering the specific object generated by other similar
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Learning While Playing 135
types of games, but also conventions and affordances provided by real world connections.
•If an object has a real world counterpart, the designer must be aware of the properties of that real world counterpart and consider them when deciding the properties and function of the game object. Game objects withrealworldcounterpartswill,intheuser’sinterpretationofthem,likely inherit the properties and affordances from the real world, with effects on the user’s assumptions of the game object’s properties.
Understandable Menus
Menu buttons and choices should be clear, descriptive and context sensitive
•“Back” buttons should link to the section or part previously visited by the user, and never to a sector that is new to the user.
•Action buttons (that lead to some kind of action) should clearly describe the action they initiate; submitting an answer for instance should be done by a “submit answer” button rather than by a “done” button.
Supporting Tools and Their Layout
Pop up menus and additional tools for problem solving (i.e., information databases or dictionaries) should never occur on top of the main element (i.e., a particular question) which they are supposed to support, but should occur beside that particular element. Additional tools offered to support the user in solving a particular task should not hide the description of the task to solve.
Game Instructions
Instructionsdealingwithbasicmovementsandactionsinthegameenvironment should be visually presented and explained in a short and compact fashion.
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136 Jegers & Wiberg
•Instructions on how to control the character and the meaning of different objects in the environment must be kept short and intuitive in order to ensure that the user utilizes them.
•The main objectives of the game in terms of the overall goal that the user should strive to accomplish and how that goal may be reached in terms of actions should be presented and explained in a short and informative way.
Conclusions
In this paper we have presented an initial study with the main purpose to find design guidelines for edutainment games. After the evaluation process, where expertwalkthroughsaswellasempiricalusabilityevaluationswereconducted, focus group sessions with HCI experts and game designers were performed. This resulted in a list of guidelines. These guidelines included: (1) Earning and loosing points, (2) Scoring and performance feedback, (3) Differences in valuable objects, (4) Task performance and feedback, (5) Promoting exploration, (6) Game objects’ characteristics, (7) Real world inheritance, (8)Understandable menus, (9) Supporting tools and their layout and, finally, (10) Gameinstructions.
Issues for future research includes further testing of other types of edutainment games in order to further verify the generality of the above developed design guidelinesforedutainmentgames.
References
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Interacting with Computers, 11, 499-516.
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Part II: Theories
Making Sense of
Technology-Enabled
Interaction
This second part of this book, entitled “Theories,” takes on a theoretical perspective on the Interaction Society. In this section, the contributing authors bring forward various discussions concerning the basic and fundamental concepts of the Interaction Society including, e.g., “interaction,” “communication,” “collaboration,” and “coordination.” The contributing chapters in this second section also contain models and theories developed to help us to better understand, analyze and even predict the role and impact of modern information and communication technologies on us as individuals, social groups, organizations and on our society. Further on, this second part of the book provides us with some models for analyzing current efforts made to support both online interaction and interaction using mobile devices in ad-hoc networks.
Overall, the purpose of this third section is thus to provide us with some analytical tools in order to help us better understand computer-supported, and mediated, interaction. If we are to deal with a new society, which is right now in the making, it is important to have the analytical tools to help us see what is important and what is not, what is unique and what is not, what is highly dynamic and what is stable, and at least, but maybe foremost, enable us to identify what is affected, or changed by, through, in, and via this new technology and technology use.
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Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 139
Chapter VI
Informational and
Communicational
Explanations of
Corporations as
Interaction Systems
Richard J. Varey
The Waikato Management School, New Zealand
Abstract
Whilst many proponents of “interactive communication” and “social interaction” do not see the concept as problematic, they focus attention on practices. I choose to re-examine both “interaction” and “communication,” and to relate these concepts to the concepts of society and organisation/corporation1. The concept of “interaction” is examined, and social interaction is considered as exchange. The patterning of social interaction in markets, bureaucracies, solidarity groupings, and cooperative collectives, and their respective core values are considered. The “organization” is explained as a complex dynamic interaction system. An alternative sociological analysis of the social is compared with that of the
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140 Varey
social psychology tradition. Communication is discussed as a mode of interaction, to reveal monologic and dialogic conceptions of communication. Conclusions are raised around the themes of “interactive communication,” IT, and dialogue and appreciation in a society constituted by interaction. Interaction, it is concluded, requires presence, whereas ICT allows absence.
Introduction
This is a discussion of the nature of human sociality in a society in which most interaction is mediated by personal communication technologies (PCTs) or informationandcommunicationtechnologies(ICTs).Myquestionis,giventhat electronic tools of interaction are rapidly approaching ubiquity, and the incidence and quantity of interactions is unquestioned, what kind of interaction can we expect, and how does this constitute our society?
What drew me to this project was my curiosity over the apparent effortless movefromdiscussing“interaction”toinvokingconcernfor“communication.” Why do we commonly use two apparently synonymous terms? Do these terms identify a single phenomenon — “communicating”? If so, is communication a particular form of interaction, and what are the other forms? If not, how can we distinguish the two phenomena, and how can we be clearer in the alternate use of these terms?
My purpose in this discussion, then, is to think sociologically (meta-theoreti- cally,reflectively)abouttheideaofanInteractionSociety,andtoproducefrom this inquiry contrasted accounts to explain social interaction (with particular attention to the events that arise when people work in occupational settings and use ICTs and PCTs in support of working together). See Weber (2003) for helpfulcommentson“speakingtheoretically.”
We all experience actions of people in the social world. No one doubts the occurrence of social interaction. The notion, then, of an Interaction Society appears unproblematic, requiring only guidance on effectiveness and efficiency.Whatdoesaccountfordifferingexplanationsofthissocialphenomenon is differing social constructions (theories) drawing upon philosophical differences of understanding and theory (explanation) of knowledge, value, and reality.
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Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 141
This chapter will critically overview information theory and communication theory to examine human interaction in organised co-operative working. This willshowthatmuch“communicationtheory”isnotcommunicationtheory,but rather information theory. To be human is to be social — an interactor.
The emergence of the concept of “information” is traced back to less than a century ago, where the technical concept of “information,” first evident as recently as in Hartley’s work (1928), problematically avoids any reference to ideas or meaning, and, thus, to people. The emergence of “information theory” in the 1940s, and usually attributed to Shannon & Weaver, will be charted. What will be identified is the desire for action-at-a-distance.
It will be confirmed that nowadays a shift in thinking and acting away from emphasisoninformationtowardsgreateremphasisoninteractionisdiscernable. The differences in social conditions that brought these ideas to the fore will be characterisedthroughahistoricalanalysis.Itwillbefurtherarguedthatwehave always had an “Interaction Society,” and that the locus of attention has been established as a “scientised” informational conception of interaction since the nineteenth century, when the problem of “communication” became explicit.
The concept “communication” allows for contact2 without presence. Somehow, reflects Peters (1999), the natural history of humans as talkative can never lose the notion of wordless contact. The worry of how to connect with people has become a given in our daily lives — even as we are surrounded by so many other people. In the lonely crowd observed by David Riesman (1961), interaction is alienated — distant, impersonal — each afraid of close contact with another and equally afraid to be alone and have no contact. So what attracts us to talk of the possibility of interaction?
When we review the term “interaction” we find two concepts: inter (between, among, of) and action (exertion of energy or influence). The term interaction is usually taken to mean to act reciprocally or to act on each other. Similar terms
— cooperate, coact, engage — are used to express mutual or reciprocal act or relation.
Much talk of the “communicating corporation” and the “learning/flexible organisation”subsumesthesocialphenomenonofinteraction.Indeed,inrecent years the advent of much chatter about “relationship marketing” and “learning communities” has included the notion of “interactive communication.” This is muddling, and the discussion here will seek to reclaim the corporate social grouping as a purposeful system (Checkland & Holwell, 1998) and system for interaction (Deetz, 1992, 1995), in which communication is a mode of
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