screens and interactivity · 2009-11-10 15:16
image by Joe McCarthy
Joe McCarthy has a writeup of the way screens are used in Disney World to keep the queue amused whilst waiting for Soarin’ ride. What’s interesting to me is that the games flip between interactive and demonstration modes – tangible or physical computing remains hidden; no discovery. I encountered this at the British Music Experience; a display on the history of dance music let you rifle through a record bag to listen to lots of different tracks.
If you left it alone – even to just listen to the music – a virtual hand would appear, move items around the screen, and eventually pick a new record to listen to: a demonstration. Unfortunately it happened so quickly that you couldn’t enjoy a record without tapping the screen constantly to stop the dreaded hand from appearing.
We’re at an odd inflection – old people think screens are TVs, young people think all screens can be touched. Another thought is that all screens are computers, and therefore you could expect interaction and networking. Just throw more technology at it.
Well, no. These bluetooth and SMS calls-to-action feel clumsy (as do 2D barcodes and anything not baked into the standard behind all mobile phones), and certainly harder than any way you’d actually get more information about a film. The best interaction is probably just a simple domain name – or possibly the “Google for…” actions that are now sprouting due to the lack of short domain names. However, I bet most domain names mentioned on posters don’t work very well on mobiles.