A discussion of Interactivity and Web Design

As we study interactivity and how it relates to website design in our class I recommend checking out this supplementary article.
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/05/20/new-web-trends-immersive-interaction-design/

This article explains what interactive elements do for a website and argues that they are helpful in the process of website design. The author suggests that interactive elements function to: accomplish a task, connect elements, make an adjustment, change a state, or allow a unique data interaction. The argument develops by stating that interactivity follows a process that begins with a "call-to-action from a user, rules for engagement as determined by the interface (what will happen and how), feedback from the user (did it work or not) and patterns or loops (does the action happen once or repeat on a schedule)." 

This relates to our class lectures of Internet Communication because it shows that media richness and interactivity work together to enhance a websites credibility, it's attitude, and it's information (Lu et al 43). In one of our class readings it deems that media richness is dependent on the ability to communicate with "face-to-face communication being the richest, threaded discussion being leanest. According to his argument, richer media contains more communication modes and social visual cues (e.g., gestures or immediate feedbacks) while less rich media have less cues or capacity to facilitate communication" (Lu et al 41).

Specifically, the article I have linked, connects to the idea of communication and the need for feedback on websites. Media richness and interactive elements serve the web audience so that they can participate in the website through those immediate visual cues of change. They serve to both recognize the audience and to aid the consumer in the service of the website. Websites now and in the future serve to accomplish more actions. For instance, back in 1995, one may only have been able to look up a website and see pictures and call a company for their service. Now you can live chat, make and monitor your account with them in real time, take 3-D tours, watch video of their services, etc.

This leads to my discussion of measuring interactivity. Our class article from Karimova states that interactivity cannot be measured because it is relative, defined in many ways, and hard to observe under said definitions. There is notion, however, in the article that states one way to measure interactivity is by a system of checks and balances. So what this means is that we can monitor a change on a website or a time when something is unbalanced and balanced in some process or cycle.

The speed at which this happens can be defined as interactivity or we can take the Bakhtinian point of view that says that everything is always "in a state of becoming, unbalanced...Therefore, the system is always in a state of interaction" (Karimova 299). So this dialogue or relation is the easiest way to measure interactivity but it may not be crucial for us to measure but rather to find more ways to promote audience and website relationships.