Sunday, September 15, 2013

Reading Response 2 - Abby Keller

The article starts out by talking about one of the first computer games to come out, and how it just came naturally. That people are attracted to action and that’s what the games did. Brenda Laurel uses that point to explain why interface is so important, and it resonated with me. She then went on to criticize how others have defined interface and tried to help us readers understand the connection by comparing it to theater.
The way she describes interface as being on the same type of level as theater was interesting. I would never think to do such a thing, but once she showed some explains throughout chapter one I immediately saw the connection and why it was relevant for me to understand. I also found it interesting that she searched the definitions of psychology, theater, and the approach to interfaces and they all turned out to be along the same lines: something like representing an action or actions with a lot of causes.
She also writes about how interface will treat us like its character in the “play” rather than someone merely looking in. At first I could not quite grasp what she was stating, but when I got to think about it more it made much better sense. That people like to be included with things, and if they create a program that makes us feel as if we are apart of the production we will be much more likely to appreciate it, rather than if we were just onlookers.

I like the idea of comparing interface to art and theater. When she talks about imagination controlling must aspects of art, as well as interfaces. It is so true. When designing a computer program that is going to be received by humans it has to be done using imagination to create an experience that simulates reality and is abstract at the same time.

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