Programming Interactivity

Chapter 16. Interfaces and Controls

Creating controls is one of the most interesting and challenging tasks that an interactive designer can take on because the very nature of tools implies an application that is defined by its use in a given task. A game or a toy or even a piece of art can all be defined by their playfulness, their aesthetic qualities, or their novelty. A tool will be judged by how it aids the completion of a task, which is a much more severe test of the quality of an application or system. As any industrial designer will tell you, creating a successful tool is one of the most challenging and rewarding tasks you can undertake. You need to have a good understanding you must have about a task, its context, and its challenges, and it’s a different way to think about a task. When you see a task, you can analyze the different aspects of it: the hard parts and the easy parts or the subtasks that take a long time or those that don’t. To understand how that task is understood by those who perform it and understand the needs that they have for a tool in that task is a different matter altogether.

However, this chapter is not just to introduce some of the things you have to think about when creating tools; it’s about creating systems with which a user will interact. This can certainly be a tool, or it can be any object that a user will use for a long period of time with a specific goal in mind. That includes controllers, instruments, and systems. The kind of thinking required ...