See summary of seminar.

Comments to the CID seminar

When discussing narrative in a digital environment, what comes to my mind is the notion of interactivity. That is in my opinion the interesting part and what differentiates digital media from other media. This was not at all discussed in the presentation. When asked about this, the speakers' answer was as follows: Interactivity has no special status. It should be considered as one among many design elements (like the ones they presented in their talk). It should be used modestly, and there must be a good reason to use it in a design. A short discussion on interactivity followed, where it was referred to Michael Joyce's writings on hypermedia and Tony Feldman's book An Introduction to Digital Media which contains an analysis of interactivity. Bo Lennstrand, IMT, Stockholm University, presented a tentative model of five levels of interactivity. To my mind, however, the model seemed to have little to tell about cognitive aspects of interaction.