researching apps

After taking a new direction for my project, I started looking into interactive media. Looking at apps in general rather than games I got a wider range of content to look at many of which didn't have I direct "goal" to them.

I looked into Chrome Experiments as a starting point but this ended as the biggest body of research into interactive media. Chrome Experiments has thousands of app experiments ranging from interactive A/V to games.

I found a few different examples that related to what I want to do and some stuck out from other both for positive reasons.

What I found with a lot of the A/V based apps which is what I was focusing on was that the ones that relied on just looking nice got dull very quickly they did not "stick"

There was quite a variety

of these some examples where interesting:

One was the resonance box which allowed you to change how the box reacted to the track player however I thought the interaction did not feel mechanical enough.

I saw a few examples that were similar to the idea of YUME which allowed users to interact a little with the image which intern triggered sounds. I felt these worked better as they had a little more setting to them which sparked more intrigue into the subtext of the project. The music element however I felt to be lacking in these and again the interaction seemed minimal

Inspirit was the next step up for me in terms of interaction and engagement. You direct a simplistic character around a fixed 360 camera making it pick up shapes to trigger sounds. I was engaged for considerably longer with this app as the character and setting added a lot more interest, however again the level of interaction became stale as I felt like I was very much just following very basic steps. More freedom would have excelled this app further in my opinion.

By far the best app that I tried was called Way to Go. At this point into researching I had ascertained that adding some form of character or narrative would be essential to create an interactive piece of media that was instantly forgettable. 

A way to go was a brilliant blend of 360 live action and traditional animation. It also incorporated interactive sections both with sound and film. The visual aspect was half of the success of this app it was the level of interaction the user was given and also the intrigue generated from the apps narrative.

What I learnt the most from reviewing this selection was that user interfaces are really important for engagement. A lot of the less successful apps had interfaces that either felt clunky or that you had little control over the app, this often made the experience far less interesting. The interface doesn't need to be complex and it doesn't need to give you lots of freedom it just needs to feel like you're are in control.