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Complication of the Computer Mouse
Reflection on audience engagement
This ongoing research project aims to investigate the mutual control between human and digital interfaces, taking the cursor as the starting point of the research. This small, tiny, unobvious visual indicator plays a vital role in interface use. While people get too familiar with digital interfaces, we pay less attention to them, not to say, question their use and the invisible mediated process behind them. One of the key concepts of the project direction is about the “touch” action in the interface, which in the development of interface and machine design leads to a lack of awareness and ignorance toward the hidden mediated experience. In the work-in-progress phase, I created a short video on a standard desktop interface and explored using the “fish in the tank” metaphor to highlight and discuss the control of the cursor subtly.
Apple Developer Guideline describes the touch gesture design as “eliciting a close personal connection with the content and enhancing the sense of directly manipulating onscreen objects.”
The audience test of this project took place at Apple Store Oxford Circus, the busiest Apple store in London, where everyone is wandering and testing the interface control on devices. For the first audience test, I choose the digital devices store as the context because this site is where people encounter interfaces with high consciousness. Moreover, as the project wants to raise awareness and discussion of the interface we use daily, setting it in situ provides an interesting and relative context. During the process, I used several random MacBooks at the Apple store to play the short video that manipulated visual elements on the desktop interface and observed viewers’ reactions. While people walk by and encounter the graphic, some stop by and watch it, and some keep touching and clicking to figure out what is happening. Overall, the most immediate reaction is direct touching and interacting with devices while watching.
In this direction, I took the video as a medium. The playing contexts could play a significant role for audiences because video has high flexibility for contextualizing, mainly on the digital screen. However, viewing videos on YouTube and in an exhibition context can bring very different experiences due to viewers’ different expectations, mindsets, and accessibility. Since the Apple store is designed to be a friendly “town” environment for people to experience devices freely, this project test used this context to discourse the interface under an active environment.
The test brings the project closer to the public, which is a necessary process for further development. It helps me scrutinize the communication performance and reveal what is effective and what needs more clarification. Through observing the viewer’s reaction, I noticed that due to the use of metaphor, and the small size of the original cursor, it could be challenging to get the concept at first sight. A better clarification and a more detailed narrative might help the audiences interpret the content better. Next step, I want to push the project further by exploring both digital and physical mediums and investigating a set of outputs that can package together to generate a better communication outcome.