Peter Spreenberg
IDEO Product Development
1527 Stockton Street San Francisco, CA 94133
415.397.1236 vox 415.397.0823 fax
spreenberg@IDEO.com
The material for the interactive portion of the Interact Journal was submitted
in a variety of formats. There were loose format guidelines for the interactive material: Macintosh
compatible, 8-bit color, 640 x 480 screen resolution. Macromedia Director was the
recommended development platform but we accepted static bitmap files and slides where
necessary. We digitized, animated (where appropriate) and edited these into more complete
presentations.
FIGURE 1. The Interact Journal CD-ROM table of contents is
presented as a map-like information
space for navigating and browsing interactive illustrations and demonstration
FIGURE 2. Within an article, the editorial and control layer is invisible until activated by
pressing
the keyboard's space bar. It is shown in use here while browsing an interactive article by Bruce
Browne and Elisabeth Waymire.
In publication design, editing and effective communication go hand-in-hand. Rather than
being exhaustive, the designer needs to be selective and present the minimum amount of content
necessary to communicate a compelling message. How the content is presented is the primary
concern of the publication designer.
Abstract
In August of 1994, the American Center for Design published a journal on Interaction
Design containing a CD-ROM edited by IDEO. The editing task included constructing a
navigational interface and integrating content supplied by a variety of contributors. Visitors to
this exhibit will be able to browse both the paper and interactive CD-ROM versions of the
Interact Journal, experiencing for themselves the synergy of information presented in
two separate but complimentary media.
Keywords:
Design, Interactive publication, Interaction design, Interface design,
Graphic design, Interactive multimedia, Navigational interface
Introduction
The American Center for Design (ACD) is a national organization of design
professionals, educators and students. The ACD publishes an annual journal of articles and
essays devoted to a particular design related theme. The theme of the 1994 journal was
Interaction Design and was published as a printed booklet with a companion CD-ROM that
provided complimentary, interactive illustrations and demonstrations. This is the first example of
a publication devoted to the theme of interaction design that includes both a printed journal and
interactive CD-ROM. This piece exemplifies multimedia publishing in that the audience has a
choice of two distinct yet parallel media channels to explore the content.
GOALS
The intended audience for the Interact Journal was designers. The term
"audience" is used instead of "user" because the end result was more a publication than a tool.
It was felt that the design of the journal needed to appeal to this highly critical and visually
sensitized group. We assumed the audience had a basic understanding of the Macintosh user
interface, the design community's primary development platform. We wanted the interface to be
engaging and provocative yet require only a minimum of Macintosh interface familiarity. We also
wanted to present an interface that would invite exploration and discovery, where the content was
not immediately accessible but allowed the audience to search around a bit, to play and have fun.
We included two extra pieces - bonus tracks - that were slightly concealed and mildly challenging
to access. Although we knew designers were interested in interaction design and related issues,
we felt they would be less intrigued if the presentation of the information were not visually
stimulating.
EDITING AN INTERACTIVE PUBLICATION
Thirteen interaction design practitioners were invited to submit articles and interactive
material to the Interact Journal. Most of the articles and interactive pieces were case
studies of interaction design projects or concepts. The projects presented examples of designs
for software user interfaces, integrated hardware/software user interfaces and interactive media
and spanned a range of design styles from conservative to avant garde.
Navigation Scheme
The Interact Journal CD-ROM table of contents is a unique navigation
scheme in which the content of the journal is represented as a map or information space
(FIGURE 1. The Interact Journal CD-ROM table of contents is presented as a map-like information
space for navigating and browsing interactive illustrations and demonstration). Only a small
portion of the entire map is visible at once but moving the cursor to the edge of the display
causes the map to scroll continuously and allows the audience to navigate about the space. Each
article is represented as a site on the map. The design or shape of the site image vaguely reflects
the structure of the associated interactive piece (i.e., hierarchical, networked, linear, etc.). This
provides the audience with a subtle preview of the piece, making navigation of the CD-ROM
obvious but transcending conventional print media devices.
Editorial and Control Layer
When we began the project, there were few existing examples we could refer to of
interactive publications where editing was a major part of the design. Our main challenge was:
How to present interactive work in an editorial context and maintain a non-intrusive, meta-level of
commentary or annotation. Unlike printed media - where peripheral information and controls for
navigation of the information space are familiar and essentially transparent to the audience - the
shell interface had to have a consistent control and interaction scheme applied as a secondary
layer to many diverse and disparate interactive presentations (FIGURE 2. Within an article, the
editorial and control layer is invisible until activated by pressing the keyboard's space bar. It is
shown in use here while browsing an interactive article by Bruce Browne and Elisabeth Waymire).
This layer had to be pervasive and accessible throughout the publication, instead of being
isolated in a discrete location, as in print media. Additionally, the control layer had to be invisible
when not in use and could not intrude on the content.
OTHER ISSUES
The prevailing standard for interactive multimedia publishing is the CD-ROM. Because of
the vast storage capacity of CD-ROMs, there is a tendency in many of the recent multimedia
offerings to strive for quantity of information. This makes sense for publications that are
reference documents or encyclopedias but may not be appropriate for more focused
compilations.
