the anti experience of Ed

This is a repost (slightly cleaned up and with a few links added) from an oft-linked-to blog post I wrote in 2004…. enjoy!

Technological Transparency.

Interactive digital art installations have an immediate hurdle to face when presenting to the general public. The problem is that no one wants to look like an idiot and mess up in front of other people. More specifically, when someone is facing an interactive installation that he or she has never seen or experienced before, he or she does not want to do something wrong and possibly (a) mess up the project or (b) look ineffectual and unknowledgable.

This is why children have more fun with interactive art than adults do! They tend to be less self conscious about going up to something and pounding on it. They’re also more likely to understand the vocabulary of interactivity with kid oriented science museums and video games out there.

Adults are more likely to associate computers with work and productivity. If you’re presenting work on a computer, you have to break past that in presentation or you lose perception and immersion points immediately. You don’t want your stuff to be perceived as a “pretty screen saver” unless, of course, your work actually is supposed to be a pretty screen saver.

Some quick tips that I’ve picked up so far:

- Hide the CPU. If it is at all possible, the CPU should be hidden behind a wall or barrier of some sorts. Having a CPU exposed can look sloppy and god forbid, cause your project to be accidentally turned off or rebooted. Most CPUs look ugly anyway (if it’s one of those sexy new G5 IMacs that’s a totally different case….).

- On the same vein, flat screen monitors are nice and sexy, but make sure they work for the colors that you’re presenting in your project. I like flat screen monitors because their front panels tend to be nicer looking and they’re easy to hang on a wall. They’re also easier to enclose or build a frame around, which, if appropriate, adds a nice touch.

- If your project absolutely requires a mouse, consider a wireless mouse on a pedestal attached to a tether or a trackball. With one show I did a while back the wireless mouse was a godsend, as less cables are always better. Trackballs are good because they don’t require flat space to roll across to use, and people are generally familiar with their operation.

- Signs or placards. People do just about every approach when it comes to signage. Some people like to put up a poster carefully explaining technical, conceptual, and technical details about their projects as well as instructions. Some only put up the name of the piece and the title.

I think the first approach (an extensive poster) is awful, and I had to endure it while I was at ITP during their school shows. It’s horribly redundant to put a picture of the project on the poster next to the project, so don’t do it. It really depends on the environment, but many times the specific details about the technology are not important or relevant, so use your judgment there. Don’t give away elements of the user experience. Otherwise, you’re ruining the surprise, or at the very least, the users’ curiosity and spirit of discovery.

A traditional art example is this. How many times have you looked at a painting in a gallery and pondered it and wondered what it was (okay, so this is probably abstract art we’re talking about here), and then you read the title and was disappointed and suddenly disinterested and walked away?

The same thing can happen when you blow the fun on the informational poster. Don’t.

However, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to at least start the user on the right track. I felt that Eyebeam and Ars Prix Electronica blew it with the Prix Selection show they did this summer in this regard. When I visited I watched as people went into the gallery, looked at various works, got confused before they interacted with them, and simply left, especially with Interactive Plantgrowing.

Every person who walks out because they don’t even know where to start is another potential patron of the art lost.