Designing for creative engagement

C

Corresponding author:Zafer Bilda

[email protected]

creative engagement
Designing for
Zafer Bilda, Ernest Edmonds, Creativity and Cognition Studios, Australasian

CRC for Interaction Design, University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 123,

Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia

Linda Candy, Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology,

Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia

This paper addresses the problem of understanding creative engagement with

interactive systems. A model of engagement is proposed which represents

modalities and phases of interactive experiences. The model was derived from

empirical studies of audience interaction with art systems. The aim is to provide

a means of facilitating communication between participants in the interaction

design process. The intention is to help improve collaboration between

participants through examining, understanding and agreeing on the set of

concepts and modalities on interactive experience. The ongoing research

involves refining and developing the model into a more general-purpose

instrument.

rown Copyright � 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: interaction design, user behaviour, evaluation, engagement,

modelling

Creative engagement with digital systems is a new and rather elusive

concept for interaction design. Enabling interactive experience that

possesses artistic intentions raises significant challenges, a major one

of which is how to anticipate and define the user experience. By its very nature,

creative engagement with interactive art systems is as varied as the individual

people who interact with it and the different types of artworks and, therefore,

quite difficult to predict. Interactive art invites the audience to engage through

interaction and, in so doing, participate in the realization of the work itself.

Experiencing art is driven by perception, where perception is an active and

constructive process. Experiencing interactive artworks involves the same

condition in addition to the active engagement with the work, which involves

being in the space of the work, interacting with it and constructing a meaning

through this interaction. Therefore, within an interactive art system, the audi-

ence as well as the artist, is engaged in a creative pursuit.

Our challenge was to find a way of representing this kind of creative engage-

ment in a way that is comprehensible and communicable to the participants

in the interaction design process. We describe an engagement model that is

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526

derived from the results of studies of audience experience with interactive

art systems. We describe engagement in terms of temporal interaction

modes which define a transformative dialogue between the participant

and the art system during the interactive art experience. The engagement

model describes this dialogue and structural components of the experience

from the audience perspective. The model was derived from case studies

of audience interactions with ten different art systems in a public exhibition

context.

The initial aim was to provide a means of facilitating communication between

artists, interaction designers, researchers and system developers, and thereby

improve collaboration through examining, understanding and agreeing on

the set of concepts and modalities on interactive experience. The model can

also be used to examine and understand audience experience of different art-

works. The ongoing research involves refining and developing the model

into a more general-purpose instrument.

1 Modelling human experience in humanecomputerinteractionStudies of the aesthetics of HCI have parallels with interactive art studies, be-

cause they focus on users’ perceptions and psychological states during experi-

ence. For example, Tractinsky and his collaborators studied users’ perceived

visual aesthetics of an interactive system, explored the relationship between

aesthetics and usability, and claimed ‘What is beautiful is usable’ (Tractinsky

et al., 2000). This claim initiated other discussions and studies reflecting similar

issues and concerns. Hassenzahl extended this concept and defined the He-

donic Qualities in the context of HCI which are tied to the individual’s self

and psychological wellbeing (Hassenzahl, 2002). He devised the concept

‘Goodness’ e as opposed to what is beautiful e which arises from combining

impressions of hedonic identification, pragmatic values (e.g., perceived usabil-

ity) and mental effort.

Norman breaks experience down into levels: the visceral, the behavioural and

reflective (Norman, 2004). The visceral level is perceptually based, giving rise

to immediate judgments: good or bad, safe or dangerous. The behavioural

level, he argues, is expectation driven, so a positive effect results from feeling

in control and from the understanding that arises during the use of a product.

Therefore, lack of control and mismatch between expectations and actual

experiences produces negative effects. The reflective level is conscious of emo-

tional feelings and is intellectually driven. Moreover, it uses the rich history of

prior experiences, one’s own self image, and personal meanings to evaluate any

experience (Norman, 2004).

Design Studies Vol 29 No. 6 November 2008

Designing for creative en

Another description of human experience is Wright, McCarthy and Meeki-

son’s framework (Wright et al., 2003). It is based on Dewey’s conceptualiza-

tion that experience is constituted by the relationship between self and

object (Dewey, 1934). This is closer to authors’ view of how to conceptualize

interactive art experience, as described in Bilda et al. (2006). In Wright et al.’s

framework, they describe four threads for experience that interact and mutu-

ally constitute one another: emotional, sensual, compositional and spatio-

temporal. The emotional thread includes anger, joy, frustration, satisfaction,

fun, or other emotional states such as meditative or flow (Csikszentmihalyi,

1990) within an experience. The sensual thread is concerned with our sensory

engagement with a situation which may refer to the look and feel of a system or

artefact as well as to the environment. Sensual and emotional threads are

intertwined and they influence each other. Compositional thread refers to

the partewhole structure of the experience, in an unfolding interaction: first,

I do something to the interactive system, and it does something back; then I

tend to create the same actioneresponse repeatedly in the next stage. These

are two of the many compositional structures of the whole experience. The

spatio-temporal thread is related to the compositional structure, that all events

and actions in the composition unfold in a particular time and place. For ex-

ample, visitors in Disneyland are directed to the shop at the start of their visit

so that they avoid the queuing experience; if they stay too long in the shop and

not move on to the next stage, they might get frustrated, so the pace of how the

experience unfolds is important. In summary, it does matter where each

compositional event/action happens and when it happens because they affect

experiential outcomes.

1.1 Experience with interactive artworksInteractive art systems invite the audience to play, to interact; in this sense,

participation is much easier to promote than to achieve. This is where the com-

puters come in. If we view the computer as a real time control device and given

that we can specify rules for how it is to respond to external stimuli, it can be

seen to put behaviour into effect by taking into sense data and controlling

output devices such as video projectors and speakers.

Experience is a key issue in interactive art because it is constructed through in-

teraction and interaction communicates the essence and the meaning of the

work to the participant. A participant experiencing an interactive artwork is

doing something to the environment (interactive art system) and undergoing

an effect from what s/he changed in the system. Therefore, the audience

actively constructs the artwork in an essentially creative process.

1.2 Creative engagementEdmonds et al discuss creative engagement with interactive artworks in terms

of three categories: attractors, sustainers and relaters (Edmonds et al., 2006).

The first is concerned with gaining attention, the second with maintaining that

gagement 527

Figure 1 Iamascope in Beta Space

528

attention and the third with ensuring a long-term interest. In this paper we are

particularly concerned with the first two of these. We consider the initiation of

interaction (concerns about attractors) and sustaining that interaction (con-

cerns about sustainers). Our interest here is in modelling the processes and

work in this kind of engagement in interactive art.

Candy and Edmonds categorized interaction types in art as static, dynamic-

passive, dynamic-interactive and dynamic-interactive-varying (also called gen-

erative) (Candy and Edmonds, 2002). Most interactive artworks we refer to in

this paper are in the dynamic-interactive category, where the human ‘viewer’

has an active role in influencing the changes in the art system. Motion and

sound capture techniques are often used to incorporate human activity into

the way visual images and sound are presented. The work performs differently

according to what the person does or says.

An example of a dynamic-interactive art system is ‘Iamascope’ (Fels and

Mase, 1999), a work which includes a camera capturing viewer images and

movement and which is connected to a controlling computer. The work reacts

to human movement in front of it by changing kaleidoscope-like images and

making music at the same time in direct response to viewer’s movements

(Figure 1).

An example of the generative type interactive art system (dynamic-interactive-

varying) is ‘Absolute 4.5’ (Edmonds, 2006). In this system, there is an addi-

tional agent (a software program) that changes the original specification of

the art object. Because of this, the performance of the artwork cannot be

predictable.

Absolute 4.5 (Figure 2) is comprised of a large screen with a changing grid of

colours accompanied by a complex sound track and controlled by a generative

set of rules carried out by a computer. As the audience approaches the screen


Figure 2 Absolute 4.5 in Beta Space


Absolute 4.5 detects their presence through sensors in the floor. Aspects of the

system’s behaviour, such as its rate of change, are influenced by audience be-

haviour in the space.

2 Studying audience experienceUnderstanding and evaluating ‘interactive experience’ is of interest to HCI re-

searchers and interaction designers. In the history of HCI, ‘interaction’ was

primarily studied through effectiveness and efficiency of a system and has

been measured by focusing on usability, user’s understanding, the number

of errors users make, and the amount of time required to complete a task.

However task-oriented evaluation techniques do not always satisfy interactive

art experience evaluation objectives. Recent trends in HCI research have be-

gun to focus on fun, pleasure, goodness and beauty (Jordan, 2000; Tractinsky

et al., 2000; Hassenzahl, 2004) as experiential goals. For example, Hassenzahl

argued that evaluation should take the role of affect and emotions into account

to better understand people’s experience of technology (Hassenzahl, 2004).

Similarly, the evaluation of audiences’ experience of interactive artworks

goes beyond usability and often involves measurement of aesthetic apprecia-

tion and the various engagement qualities which are dependent on personal

traits, motivations, expectations, emotions and cognitive states of the

audience.

Audience/user experience evaluation is conducted using several methods such

as direct and lateral observations in the context of experience, contextual en-

quiries (interviews with the audience during their experience of an interactive

system) and/or expert workshops (where experts are invited to experience and

discuss an interactive system). These methods can help the interaction designer

to understand to what extent audience expectations are met and how to further

develop the interaction design. For example, Hook et al. showed that some

HCI evaluation methods can be useful for improving the development of in-

teractive artworks. The evaluation approach responded to the concerns of

gagement 529

530

the interactive artist and assisted the design of the interactive artwork studied

(Hook et al., 2003).

2.1 Beta Space: a living laboratory for interactive artThe context in which this research occurred was the Creativity and Cognition

Studios (CCS)1 a multi-disciplinary practice-based research group in digital

media and the arts. In 2003, CCS and the PowerhouseMuseum, Sydney joined

together to create a pivotal public space called Beta Space in the exhibition

galleries of the museum. Beta Space provides an environment for artists,

designers and technologists to design, implement and evaluate artworks with

real audiences.

The objectives of audience experience research in Beta Space are two-fold:

, To support artists and designers in the development of their interactive

artworks as part of an iterative creative process. Research into audience

experience thus forms part of a process of formative evaluation for each

artwork.

, To contribute to a general understanding of the experience of interactive

art and design of new media that can support theorists, artists, designers,

curators and producers.

In evaluating audience experience, we study people experiencing the interac-

tive artworks using observational and qualitative research methods (Bilda,

2006). This enables us to consider whether the audience experience relates to

the artist/designer’s intentions. Audience experience studies have been under-

taken in which different works are installed and people asked to participate in

the research by visiting the space and agreeing to provide information about

their experiences. Our methods of enquiry involve context analysis and obser-

vations, contextual interviews, video-cued recall, along with qualitative and

quantitative analyses of protocols of verbal and non-verbal (behavioural)

data. In Candy et al., we describe the research methods used to study interac-

tive art experience (Candy et al., 2006) in detail. Qualitative and behavioural

data is collected in three stages: (1) direct observation or observation via video

recording, (2a) either contextual interviewing or (2b) video-cued recall, (3)

structured interviews or questionnaires. We employ these three stages in differ-

ent ways for experiences of different artwork installations.

3 A model of creative engagementIn this section we describe a model for active engagement with interactive sys-

tems, based on defining interactive experience as a transformative dialogue be-

tween the audience and the interactive (art) system. We identified cognitive

components of interaction and used these as basic elements of the engagement

model through studying the different art systems and different audiences. The

engagement model represents ‘interaction modes’ and ‘interaction phases’


UnInteraction

Modes

Expe

Phases Ad

Figure 3 Model of engagement: in


related to the participant’s experience of an interactive art system. While inter-

action modes define dialogues between the participant and the art system,

interaction phases define participant’s longer-term cognitive processes (see

Figure 3).

The model was developed through long-term analysis of direct and lateral

audience observations and qualitative analyses of audience verbal reports

and interviews. Observational and qualitative data was collected from audi-

ence experience of ten different artwork installations in Beta Space over

a three-year period between November 2004 and November 2007. The works

in chronological order are Iamascope (Figure 2), Absolute 4.5 (Figure 3),

Cardiomorphologies, Sonic Thai Chi, Contagion Prototype, Time Sketches,

To Be or Not To Be, GEO Landscape 0.1, The Musicians and Just a Bit of

Spin. Further descriptions of the artworks, can be found on the Beta Space

website (www.betaspace.net.au).

3.1 Audience intentions, expectations and transformativedialogueThe key to understanding interactive experience and engagement is to learn

about people’s intentions in performing certain actions and how they make

sense of their experience and outcomes of their actions. Our methods for

studying audience experience involve gathering detailed qualitative descrip-

tions of their experiences as well as observing/recording their behaviours

during the timeline of the interactive experience. Audiences have various

intentions and motives for acting in a certain way, although their interaction

behaviour often looks similar.

Expectation Expectation Expectation Expectation

intended Deliberate Intended/ in

control

Intended/

uncertain

Unexpected

ctation

aptation

Learning

Deeper understanding

AdaptationAnticipation

teraction modes and phases

gagement 531

http://www.betaspace.net.au

532

A participant’s intention (in performing an action) can be identified from two

different perspectives: first, the participant’s specific purpose (fun, pleasure,

curiosity, accomplishment etc.) in performing the action, and second, the out-

come or goal the participant has, where s/he expects her action will result in

a specific response or outcome by the system. Whilst the first perspective is

related to personal experience, the second perspective is more about the

participant’s expectations of the system.

In most areas of HCI and computation, whether an action is successful or

unsuccessful depends on whether the intended result is achieved: for example,

clicking on the play button will be a successful action if it plays the video.

However, for understanding the experiences with an artwork, whether an

action is deemed to be successful or not may not be an appropriate measure

of success.

In the area of interactive artworks where creative engagement is encouraged,

the intended result can be made ambiguous to the participant. Assume the fol-

lowing scenario in a custom-made video player application: pushing the play

button will play the video first time, and then, when the video finishes, it stops.

Pushing the play button a second time plays the second video on the list, and

also initiates another change in the system. The change is that the video appli-

cation plays the current video for a minute and then starts to play the third

video on the list. The user is surprised with this system behaviour and does

not know why this happened. However s/he still thinks that his/her intention

(of playing the video) resulted in an expected outcome (the system played the

video). The application finishes playing the third video and stops. When the

user pushes the play button third time, the application fast-forwards the video.

We call such interactions involving unfamiliar consequences of someone’s

repeated actions as unexpected, because the intention of the action and the

intended result do not match. If participant’s intention is ‘accomplishment’

during her interaction with the video work, then it would be satisfied the first

and second time, but not the third time when the video fast-forwards. S/he

might get frustrated because her purpose and the outcome are not aligned any-

more based on her initial intentions and expectations. Alternatively the user

might become ‘curious’ about the system and explore it more. That is where

the concept of creative engagement emerges: the participant might find herself

re-thinking about her intentions or the outcomes she expects. Therefore, her

intentional behaviour can become ‘thoughtful’. If s/he shifts her intention to

‘enjoying the moment’, rather than focusing on the intended outcome, she

will have to make sense of her experience in a different way to what it was be-

fore. Therefore, there is a shift in her intention and expectation. We define this

process as the ‘transformative dialogue’ between the self and the object/system.

The shifts in intentionality and expectations are also key concepts in under-

standing creative engagement. Each participant has different expectations of



what the art system is, might be and will be: therefore, their intentions are

shaped by their expectations.

Expectations are often established by mindsets. There could be several mind-

sets for participants who first walk into an interactive art environment. Some

examples are:

‘‘I did not interact with an artwork before, so I do not know what do to.’’

‘‘I’ve heard about interactive artworks, but I don’t understand how art can be

interactive.’’

‘‘I’ve experienced some interactive artworks before, and I thought they were fun,

this should be fun too.’’

‘‘I’ve experienced some interactive artworks before and I did not really get the

idea, it was almost uncomfortable for me.’’

‘‘I experience interactive artworks all the time, so I look at them critically and

expect to enjoy them.’’

All these mindsets bring differing expectations that result in different sets of

performed actions, interactions and experiences for each participant.

The engagement model represents the perspective, expectations and interac-

tion behaviours of the participant who walks into the exhibition space, inter-

acts with the work, stays engaged and goes through phases during her

experience. Therefore, the active engagement model is human-centred, rather

than system centred, i.e. it does not represent the system architecture of the art-

works. The model shows a series of interaction modes that might sequentially

or non-sequentially occur during the interactive experience (Figure 3). A de-

scription of the elements follows.

3.2 Interaction modesThe modes of interaction represented in the model were identified from our

observations and detailed analyses of audience’s intentions and expectations

during their experiences with interactive artworks. All data were collected in

Beta Space and included video/audio recordings of audience behaviour and

verbalizations. Based on ten case studies, including audience experience re-

search with more than 100 observations and interviews, we have identified

five different modes of interactions: unintended, deliberate, intended/in

control, intended/uncertain, and unexpected.

Unintended mode refers to the initial interaction with a system or environment

where audience expectations are not set. This means the audience have no

prior idea about what the system does. In the Beta Space context, this is

before the participant reads the descriptive information about the work (de-

scriptive information is often printed on a poster and displayed on the side

gagement 533

534

wall). In the HCI context, this could be an experimental scenario where a user

is trying out a software or application without knowing its purpose and how

it works. Assume it is a smart sketching software but the user is not told what

the software is or is used for. As a first action, the user might open the appli-

cation see a white blank screen and click somewhere on the screen without

any specific intention, and this brings out a pop up window saying: ‘click

on the area to the right hand side to start the menu’. Here the user interacts

with the system without knowing what her specific intentions are; this is what

we call the unintended mode.

Deliberate mode refers to a stage after the initial interactions with a system or

environment, where audience knows a little of what to expect. In our HCI sce-

nario where the user is trying out new sketching software, s/he recognizes that

it is software and that it has a menu structure. S/he reads through the menu

action labels and develops ideas about its possible capabilities. In this mode s/

he should be able to establish a (desired) outcome (for example drawing

a line) from exploring and understanding what the system is capable of doing.

S/he has a limited idea of what the system is doing, and expects features and

functions to work as she expects.

Intended/in control mode refers to a stage where the audience is capable of set-

ting a purpose for his/her actions and expectations about the outcomes. In

our HCI scenario, s/he would be performing some simple tasks such as draw-

ing several lines and curves on a white screen, changing tools and trying out

paint buckets, thickness of pencils, and the crop tool. S/he thinks she has an

understanding of the system (that it’s a drawing/sketching tool) and becomes

comfortable with doing and repeating some of the tasks. S/he feels in control,

i.e. her intended actions and her expectations of outcomes are aligned.

Intended/uncertain mode refers to a stage where the audience starts expanding

her/his intentions for her actions and expectations about the outcomes. In our

HCI scenario, s/he starts sketching an L-shape building, and as she finishes

the shape, three divisions appear in the shape unexpectedly. When she moves

her mouse over the shape the lines disappear. She remembers that in her pre-

vious drawings she divided shapes into three, and starts thinking that the soft-

ware is smarter than she thought. Is it possible that the software recognizes

and displays the emergent shapes based on her drawing history? Probably

her understanding of the system has shifted from a drawing tool to a smart

sketching assistant. S/he becomes curious, starts thinking about playing

with different emergent shapes. Her intentions and expectations from the sys-

tem has transformed based on her dialogue over time with the system. In this

interaction mode (intended/uncertain), s/he can set out intentions (possibly

new ones) and s/he is uncertain about the outcomes. Intended/uncertain

mode has one of the highest possibilities for creative engagement, where the

user can end up with creative outcomes or understanding from her

experiences.

Unexpected mode refers to a stage where the audience questions her/his inten-

tions, expectations about outcomes and what the system is about. In our HCI



scenario, we can imagine that the smart sketching assistant starts displaying

the emergent shapes and making them stay on the sketch, almost taking con-

trol of her sketching process, by trying to convince her to make decisions she

did not want or think about. S/he finds this behaviour quite unexpected and

starts thinking that the assistant is annoying her. She does not feel in control

of the system and it becomes hard for her to set out an intention and what to

expect. She is not sure whether she is interacting with a smart sketching assis-

tant or she is in a wizard of OZ experiment. From the user’s perspective this

could be either chaotic or an opportunity to reflect on what she experienced.

She can terminate her interaction, or can keep on interacting with the smart

assistant to convince him what he suggests is not a good idea. Through this

process she might end up with new ideas and outcomes. Unexpected mode

of interaction is the most transformative type of dialogue between the audi-

ence and the system. This mode has the highest risk for frustration and the

highest potential for creative outcomes and influential experiences.

3.3 Interaction phasesInteraction phases are periods during a participant’s interactive experience

that are based on her/his cognitive and perceptual states. Figure 3 shows

that phases are aligned with interaction modes and they may overlap with

each other. This is because the start and the end of the phases cannot be strictly

identified and can change with how the participant perceives and thinks about

the system. We identified four interaction phases: adaptation, learning, antic-

ipation and deeper understanding.

Adaptation: The participant adapts herself to the changes in the environment;

s/he learns how to behave and how to set expectations, s/he works with un-

certainty. This phase often occurs from unintended mode through to deliber-

ate mode.

Learning: The participant starts developing an internal/mental model of what

the system does, this also means that s/he develops (and changes) his/her ex-

pectations, emotions, and behaviours, accesses her memories and beliefs. In

this phase the participant interprets exchanges, explores and experiments re-

lationships between his/her initiation and the feedback from the system.

Therefore, s/he develops expectations of how to initiate certain feedback

and accumulates a number of interpretations of the exchanges. This phase

can occur from deliberate mode to intended/in control mode.

Anticipation: In this phase, the participant knows what the system will do in re-

lation to his/her initiation; in other words, s/he anticipates how the interaction

will take place. Here, intention is more grounded compared to the previous

phases. This phase can occur from deliberate to intended/in control mode.

Deeper understanding: The participant reaches a more complete understand-

ing of the artwork and what his or her relationship is to the artwork. S/he

starts finding the meanings the artist was trying to convey, and finding out

what the whole artwork means. In this phase s/he judges and evaluates at

gagement 535

536

a higher, conceptual level. She may discover an aspect of an artwork or an

exchange she was not aware of before. This phase can occur from in-

tended/in control mode to intended/uncertain mode.

4 Implications of the engagement modelOur studies of audience experience demonstrated that investigating temporal

and sequential aspects of participant’s thinking and behaviour is necessary

for describing the dialogue between the art system (object) and the partici-

pant’s internal world (self). The evolution of this dialogue along the timeline

of an experience is represented with the interaction modes and phases in the

Engagement Model (Figure 3). In this way, the model provides the interaction

designer with an understanding of the range of possible experiential compo-

nents and where and when they occur as the interactions unfold.

4.1 Enagagement model is sequential and temporalThe contribution of the Engagement Model to the literature of modelling

human experience is that it identifies and labels certain modes of the interactive

experience and how these modes unfold along the timeline of an experience.

The most significant aspect of the model is that it suggests sequential and

temporal definitions of experience. This means that the sequence and duration

of each interaction mode could be different for each individual experience.

During the audience experience of ‘Iamascope’ (Figure 1) we found that the

interaction modes were following the sequence in Figure 3: i.e. experience

unfolding from unintended mode, to deliberate mode and then to intended/

in-control mode. For some participants, the unintended mode took more

time than the others, while for others, it took just a few seconds and they

initially interacted in a deliberate mode. Thus, the timing and duration of

the interaction modes was different for each participant.

The sequence of the five interaction modes as illustrated in the Engagement

Model (Figure 3) may not be followed to the end. For example, the in-

tended/in control mode (3rd mode) was where the engagement ended for

some of the participants experiencing ‘Iamascope’. This was after participants

recognized that the image on the screen was the kaleidoscopic image of parts of

their own body (self). They played with the images for some time and then left

the room, as if there was nothing more left to discover. On the other hand,

some participants stayed engaged with ‘Iamascope’ even after recognizing

their body in the kaleidoscopic image and went on to discover different aspects

of the work which those who did not persist were not aware of.

During the audience experience of ‘Absolute 4.5’ (Figure 2), we observed the

interaction modes followed a different sequence from the Engagement Model

sequences. The experience often started within the unintended mode and then

unfolded towards deliberate, followed by intended/uncertain or unexpected



mode. Most participants did not exhibit the intended/in control mode during

‘Absolute 4.5’ experience. For example, one participant talked about his illu-

sion that he was in control of the system (i.e. his intentions and the feedback

from the system were aligned) although Absolute 4.5 gave no control to its

audience:

‘‘I was trying to work out if I had a repetitive sound every time I had the same

screen. So what I perceived to be the same screen if I received the same sound or

not. In the end I decided there was no logic to it, or at least I couldn’t work it

out.’’

Another participant interacting in an intended/uncertain mode thought he

was in the intended/in control mode for a short period of time:

‘‘I wanted to get all four panels the same color just once, one time so there you

go and I was quite pleased with myself for getting it to stick for quite a long

time, but of course it moved on.’’

4.2 Moving from adaptation to deeper understandingThe duration of the adaptation, learning and deeper understanding phases are

often dependent on participant’s previous knowledge and expectation from

an interactive art system. In the ‘Iamascope’ study, while some participants

stated that their engagement was interesting or exciting before they discov-

ered that the image reflected their body parts, another (smaller) group of par-

ticipants stated they enjoyed exploring the possibilities of creating different

sounds or images on the screen even after figuring out how those images

and sounds were created. For example, a choreographer was intrigued by

the possibilities of using her body in different ways:

‘‘I kept trying to get little recognisable parts of my body onto the screen. That

was quite cool. I was quite intrigued by that. at this point I was thinking like e

because I do a lot of choreography and I was thinking oh this is a really inter-

esting choreograph.’’

As in the example of the choreographer’s experience, some participants

reached a deeper understanding of the system possibilities and engaged

with it in more creative ways.

4.3 When does creative engagement occur?Sometimes the participants interpret the interaction situation as unconven-

tional, because their intentions and expectations are not aligned. How partic-

ipants deal with an unconventional situation is a key for them to see new

paths for interaction. This often needs a shift in thinking about the new situ-

ation. This shift in thinking can, in return, initiate a new way of making sense

of her/his experience. We identified this path of a transformative dialogue be-

tween the system and the participant creative engagement. As much as crea-

tive engagement is related to how one chooses to make sense of her/his

experience, it is also dependent on how the system generates or triggers these

unconventional situations.

gagement 537

538

A musician was creatively engaging with the work ‘Absolute 4.5’ as he aimed

at working with the unexpected states of the system. Up to this point he was

not able to make sense of what the system was doing in relation to his inten-

tions. Then he re-interpreted what the current sounds meant to him:

‘‘I tried to figure out, because I’m a musician, I tried to work out the rhythms in

my head and work out if I could layer them or how they related to each other, so

if I could get a steady rhythm going in one place, how this affected or how the

tempos or moving to another place were related.’’

Here, the participant shifted his thinking about what ‘Absolute 4.5’ was doing

and made sense of his experience with the work. As we illustrated in the above

example, we discovered that intended/uncertain and unexpected modes of

interactions are more likely situations for creative engagement to occur.

With a skilled and appropriate understanding of participants’ modes and

phases during their interactions, we can design for creative engagement.

4.4 Designing for creative engagementWhen designing for creative engagement, the interaction designer often looks

into materials for interactivity, as well as affordances of these materials and

techniques for achieving intuitive interactions for users. Our engagement model

proposes that the interaction designer should also understand whether users are

interacting with the system in uncertain or unexpected modes. This can be done

during preliminary experience evaluations when a prototype is ready using

a procedure that sets out appropriate evaluation objectives, observing users’

behaviour and having them talk about their experiences. The feedback can

inform interaction design ideas, map opportunities and hopefully, inspire the

interaction designer through their better understanding of the user’s situations.

Eventually achieving these interaction modes would not guarantee for each

individual to be creatively engaged with the system: however, we would argue

that the opportunity for triggering or encouraging unexpected and transforma-

tive dialogues between the user and the system is increased.

Edmonds’ concepts of attractors and sustainers are also useful for under-

standing how an art system might facilitate creative engagement. For exam-

ple, interaction designers can encourage engagement by identifying the

behaviour of initiators, attractors or sustainers (Edmonds et al., 2006). In

Edmond’s model, the notion of an attractor suggests designing for immediate

recognition. A clear example to attractor, in the case of ‘Iamascope’ is that

the participant recognizes herself in the kaleidoscopic image and understands

the connection between the system and self. This recognition is a significant

point in the experience, and almost a turning point. However, for most par-

ticipants ease of attraction seems to go hand in hand with becoming easily

bored. We observed this during our studies of experience evaluation: most

participants left the room after they figured out how the system worked

(i.e. they recognized the self/body in the kaleidoscopic image). Sustainers



on the other hand require designing for intrigue or a degree of puzzlement

that invites the participant to keep trying. Intended/uncertain mode and un-

expected interaction modes refer to how the audience deal with and respond

to sustainers. While ‘Iamascope’ was designed dominantly with initiators

and attractors in mind, ‘Absolute 4.5’ was designed predominantly with

sustainers in mind.

Wright and McCarthy argue that future interaction design should revise the

very way of looking at the ‘human’ in humanecomputer interaction and

that taking user experience seriously was essential. They suggest that building

narratives and dialogues for designers could better reflect the experience and

felt life at the centre of their thinking about human experience. For example,

the dialogical approach to design involves creating scenarios and representa-

tions that allow designers to know about the personae having the experience;

including her motivations, expectations and intentions (Wright and McCar-

thy, 2005). Our audience experience studies of different interactive art installa-

tions essentially served for this purpose. Through investigating the situated

experience of different participants in each case (art system) we built a context

and framework to understand human experience with interactive systems. Ac-

cordingly definitions of interaction modes and phases within the engagement

model bring attention to cognitive, emotional and intellectual aspects of

people’s interactions with technology. We hope the engagement model can

provide interaction designers and artists with an understanding of the situa-

tional concepts of engagement in a way that helps them design for more engag-

ing experiences.

5 ConclusionIn this paper we described a model for active engagement with interactive art-

works, based on defining interactive experience as a transformative dialogue

between the audience and the artwork system. The model was developed as re-

sult of studying experiences of ten different art systems by different audiences

over a three-year period. From our data collection and analysis, we identified

interaction modes, phases and states of audience engagement and used these as

basic elements of the engagement model. We propose that the model contrib-

utes to our understanding of audience engagement and offers a realistic and

viable framework the problem of designing for creative audience engagement

with interactive art systems. The model will be used to examine and under-

stand audience experience of different artworks. How interaction design can

reflect this model is a future question we would like to explore. Future work

will involve designing an interactive experience based on the engagement

model and evaluating whether the audience engages with it in creative ways.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to express our gratitude to the artists, study participants and re-

searchers of the Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology,

gagement 539

540

Sydney and the PowerhouseMuseum, Sydney. The work was partly conducted

within the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design, which is supported under

the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.

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1. Faculty of IT, University of Technology, Sydney. www.creativityandcognition.com.


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