EVERY INTERACTIVE CONSTRUCT MUST PROVIDE REIMBURSEMENT OF VALUE EQUAL TO, OR IN EXCESS OF, THE USER’S SELF-APPRAISED INVESTMENT OF TIME, ATTENTION AND EFFORT OF ACTION.

All the rules of economics apply to this system- though nothing physical is exchanged.  In this economic exchange the User must perceive being the inordinate beneficiary, where time, attention and action are His currency.  Whereas, promise and (not “or”) payoff of value are the currency of the Interactive content creator.

Ultimately value – and not the communication of value – is the light that attracts the moths in this system.

Some of you are thinking this is obvious.  And yet, all too often, more often than not, advertisers do not demonstrate such an understanding.  How often are we asked to “register” before gaining access to content of undisclosed value?  How often does a click on a banner ad result in redirection to more marketing messaging?  How often does “Click Here” reside, where rather, something wonderful that creates a sense of curiosity should?

This axiom operates both at the macro and the micro.  On the one hand it is the foundation of an ongoing relationship with the user, and on the other it drives every unique rollover and click.

Every click or interaction represents a User’s investment- a prepayment that is based on a perceived promise, and must be rewarded with a payoff.

Not a tagline, a payoff. Failure to pay off every such prepayment is akin to thievery.  No wonder users are so skeptical of most online advertising.

BRANDING THE PROMISE

Have you ever wondered why, on the one hand, visitors to Disneyland will go to such great personal cost to get to the theme park, and wait in line for up to 3 hours or more to experience a 4 minute ride?  And further, why these same humans won’t give your proposition so much as a click?

Disney has done an excellent job branding their promise.  They have consistently (not occasionally, or once) paid off the “users’” prepayment with inordinate value.  Consistently, the pay off at the end of the line was “worth it”.  Thus the willingness to prepay again.

What is the pay off at the end of your click?  And at a higher level, what is the payoff at the end of all your clicks?  Do you pay off with inordinate value?  Do you even think in those terms?   If you do pay off, have you done it consistently for years, and plan on continuing for many more?

There is an opportunity for every brand out there that is willing to make a commitment to paying off every marketing based click- for years to come.  Should a brand take such a stance, it will be rewarded with a huge and consistent user response.  Users will come to trust the brand. They’ll know that when that brand says “click here” it’s worth it.  More specifically, they will come to trust the marketing.  They will seek the marketing out.  They will go to great effort to find that button to click. 

One of the admitted issues here, is that advertising tends not to work that way.  Campaigns are changed quarterly, or more frequently, few in the advertising industry contemplate multi-year initiatives.

And yet.  That’s what is required. In order to brand the promise of your brand.  Got it?  

I have been developing Interactive work for over 15 years, and sadly, my son may never see any of it. That’s because we are living in what future generations will undoubtedly call: The Digital Dark Ages.

This all came to a head with renewed force for me a few weeks ago, when an interactive agency contacted me as part of a vendor pitch. They were very proud of themselves for having “innovated a brand new kind of banner ad”. One that allowed the user to interact with the brand/store/product within the banner itself, all  without leaving page the banner was on.  They went on to imply that it was the first time this had ever been done, and wasn’t it a brilliant solution.

I generally agreed with it being the right direction – well, righter than the static alternative – except that it had been done before, and frankly, many times.  I know because, my old company, Red Sky Interactive, did it, to name one.  A lot.  And as far back as 10 years ago.  And it worked then.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across such a disconnect from past efforts.  Especially in advertising.  It seems to me that advertisers “discover” the same basic, big ideas, a couple times each decade.  And each time it’s hailed as a “truly innovative solution” all over again, as if it hadn’t happened the first time.  This doesn’t just happen with banner ads either, but all sorts of basic interactive principles, interface techniques, and solutions based on newly observed user-behavior.  I honestly don’t think this is a case of selective memory, to their credit I think they truly believe they invented the idea.  In part because they probably had to.  Redundant though it may have been.

—

Many years ago I was working on a project and needed to reference what I recalled was some aesthetically innovative interactive work in its time.  I had the CD-ROM on my bookshelf – “The Dark Eye”.  It was an awesome piece of work, created by animator Doug Beswick and featured really ground-breaking components including beautifully designed stop-motion puppets.  The packaging still looked awesome.  Looks innovative even still by today’s standards.  It was created in 1995,  and when I attempted to run it, …”the application that created it could not be found”.  I realized with some degree of concern that I had created a fair number of projects around that time, and before.  I saved those old interactive projects- all manner of files, dutifully copied and transferred and burned, from machine to machine over the years- because they represented the bulk of my own body of work, and contained ideas and experiences that I wanted to keep for posterity.  Many were first of kind innovations that won coveted awards and in some cases set industry bars.  

I held my breath and double-clicked one of the pieces I was most proud of, and discovered that neither could it’s application be found.  I tried every way at my access to open it, and only then fuzzily remembered that I’d created it with a program called “Video Works II” – long before its name was changed to Macromind Director – which was incidentally before the company changed it’s name to Macromedia, before the popular Internet, most certainly before Shockwave plugins, not to mention the arrival of Flash, and it’s subsequent acquisition by Adobe.  Needless to say, I no longer had the tools that I’d created the piece with. 

The implications slowly setting in, I rapidly double-clicked, and watched in breathless horror as project after coveted project sadly faded into digital abstraction- unreadable data- like film trapped on a reel.  That the only way they might see the light of day again is if I went to tremendous effort to, technologically, go back in time and bring them forward with me, version-by-version, adjusting code along the way.  The most recent of the “lost” pieces were roughly 5 years old.  

That’s the day I decided I lived in the Digital Dark Ages.

I believe that future generations will look back at these days, and except for those few who are trying to “archive” portions and thin, top layers of the Internet, will have little idea of what was actually happening in Interactive media today.  There will simply be a hole in our history, and no physical artifacts to remember it by.  Lessons will be lost, only to be relearned.  When you consider the mass of interactive work being created daily, it’s virtually unreasonable to think that all of that innovation will be effectively captured en-masse and stored in a form that can be meaningfully revisited across a changing medium.

Our language, messages and artwork, are only made possible through tools and platforms that will relentlessly evolve out from under our work.  Confronted with this scenario, a surprising number of people have suggested “video taping my work for posterity”.  But to me – an Interactivist, that entirely defeats the purpose.  This is interactive work.  You haven’t experienced it unless you interact with it.  Frankly, at the moment, it’s interactive work that requires a mouse and keyboard.  But even this hardware- the mouse- is on its way out.  If we don’t purposefully pursue a solution, we will need to admit that it’s okay to let our place in History diminish with our work.

When I created it, I had imagined, years from now, finding myself contemplating my waning life, but being able to look back at the great work I’d created. To show my son.  I’d hoped naively, that like the painters, sculptors, writers, film-makers of the past, that perhaps my work would persist for future generations, and maybe even serve as a touch point in instances.  I see now that that isn’t likely for any of us.

There are a few possible solutions to this issue:

1. Update.  Commit to regularly upgrading work, advancing it into new platforms.  This would require a scheduled effort, and will require re-coding as a frequent measure.  As platforms change, creators will have to rethink interface elements.  Admittedly, this solution becomes exponentially more difficult over time. 
2. Emulate.  It may yet be possible – and hopefully will be in the future- to load any OS and software configuration from the past into what will undoubtedly be very capable computing environments.  Hardware will have to be emulated as well… which poses some interesting design challenges, but hey – I can run Windows on my Mac, so maybe this isn’t too far fetched. I expect this is still a way off however.
3. Museum.  A museum of old systems/platforms could potentially display key work to future audiences.  And I’ll admit, that’s how I view some of my work today.  Unfortunately this does not extend well, and is restricted by physical limitations.
4. Let go.  It now appears to me that, as Interactivists, we may be working much closer to live performance than we had ever imagined.  Technology is merely our stage.  Perhaps we need to cozy up to that idea, and walk in with our eyes wide open.  The illusion of “persistent content” comes with the ability to “Save”, “Duplicate” and “Burn”. But in fact, Interactive work rests on a flowing stream of technology – a stream that ultimately carries it away, even while traditional media persists.
5. There is a 5th option.  Development of the Human Computer Interface Preservation Society.  This effort is underway, and we will announce details as they become available.

In the mean time, interactive media, and more specifically, the language of interactivity, is still hovering in this awkward adolescent stage, a position it’s been in for over a decade.  The most expedient way that we’ll move beyond this state is if the innovative efforts of our current crop of talent, industry creatives and engineers, more decisively builds off of what was done before – not replicate it.  

My advice to younger Interactive developers: find and interact with a seasoned mentor(s).  They’re out there, and I’m sure you’ll find them willing to recall hidden efforts.  Unlike any other “recorded medium”, the Charlie Chaplins, the Leonardo DaVincis, the relative “masters” of Interactive media are still alive today, and for better or worse, the best, most complete source of information on the subject rests with them, not on the net in circulation.  At least in the short-term it’s the only way we can effectively build off the innovation and invention that came before us.

THE USER IS YOUR KING.  YOU ARE THE SUBJECT.

The User is your King.  You are the subject.  Like it or not the User is in control.  The User is the ultimate master.  The User is King.  Those of us who create interactive experiences must accept our lowly positions in the Grand Interactive Order, serving, amusing, and satisfying; ready and able to wield every ton of technical prowess and creative ingenuity we can muster to completely conform to each user’s unique interest, desire, whim and disposition.  To delight the user when she grows bored.  To shuttle the user to the very thing she needs or wants instantly- with nary a second spent indulging interests of our own.  Don’t bow to this Axiom, and you will fail…

No matter where you sit on the Interactive Content Creator’s side of the table, be you a writer, programmer, advertiser, financier, artist, producer, or huge, really important fortune 500 client who receives deep, humble, bowing greetings from your ad agencies; it doesn’t matter- you beggingly serve the User.  You serve your King before all else.

This fact is well understood in certain circles.  Entrepreneurs, video game developers, film-makers, writers, product developers, inventors – anyone whose customer is the general public, they tend to understand this rule – even if they don’t fully grasp it’s primal gravity in the Interactive space. 

In my experience, the least versed, of course, are advertisers and marketers.  For reasons that go to the heart of advertising’s very existance, this mammoth industry struggles to comprehend this most basic of constructs; unthinkingly breaking the rule with virtually every execution, and paying the price for it.  (I will detail this condition in future posts.)

The servant who commits the sin of indulging himself, of misdirecting the King even for an instant to satisfy his own “business objectives” or “marketing plan”, spends that instant in polar opposition to the Masters’ interests.  It’s simple, don’t do what the Master wants, and your user will simply dismiss you and choose the next servant in line, hoping that this plebe will recognize his true place in the unspoken pact of the Grand Interactive Order.  Interactive Developers, and Marketers are servants, jesters, and monkeys performing for change.  We may have no pride or motivation of our own unless we are willing to narrow our Users’ embrace. 

Take the classic example of a DVD.  We’ve all had this experience – you insert the DVD, you sit with the remote waiting for the start of the movie, then, uninvited, the FBI Warning appears.  You hit the “skip” button.  …and nothing happens.  You hit it again to discover that your skip functionality has been silently disabled, forcing you to sit through the entirety of the static segment.  It’s happened to you dozens of times, and yet I’m sure we’ll agree, it nevertheless has the effect of raising your blood pressure.  That’s because the 1st Axiom was broken.  You sit there with the unspoken promise of control – and yet that control was wrested away from you – that promise was broken – broken by your servant.  You, the King, were denied, you were forced to submit, to mutedly concede.  And no, yelling at the screen doesn’t count.  Though it’s what I do.  While the feeling is fresh, I would encourage every content developer to consider what promises of control you have broken with your audiences.

The biggest problem with conventional interactive content, the reason that so few interactive pieces satisfy their users and thus ultimately fail to meet business objectives, is that content-creators unthinkingly break this rule every day.  Every banner ad, every interstitial, every linear intro, every presumptive registration page, slow download, low resolution video clip, cookie request, virtually everything that we regularly hear users complain about are immediately traceable to a breaking of the Grand Interactive Order.  For each of these, in one form or another, represents an action or admission the user must make to conform to the Developer, the Content Creator.  And this is the opposite of Interactive truth.

Further, every disruption to the Grand Interactive Order typically falls into one of two categories:

• Those that demonstrate that the developer is selfish, too directive or self-indulgent.  This is commonly the result of traditional, interruptive advertising tactics like banner ads, interstitials, etc. and all ranges of registration barriers, or
• Those that demonstrate that the developer is weak.  Often through experiences marked by low technical quality, poor design and poorly engineered systems resulting in slow processing, slow downloads, poor resolution, confusion etc. Or related, those that demonstrate that the developer is cheap, as through low economic investment resulting in limited user options and insufficient depth and breadth.

Some time ago, I found myself thinking about all our amazing technical advances – especially those that beg moral questions- and I began a journey that changed the way I approach technology, and changed how I think of humanity… and headphones.  

The last thing the web needs – no, the last thing the world needs is another Blog.  I admit that.

Or at least that’s what I thought 10 years ago. But a decade later we’re still struggling to advance this medium past the point of base comfort.

I had a brilliant roommate in art school who was an exchange student from Hong Kong. English was his second language, and he came into the country with very little ability to communicate. His accent was thick and his vocabulary limited. Years into his time in the US, his accent still just as thick and his vocabulary still limited, he admitted to me that at some point shortly after arriving he’d lost the drive to work on his language skills because he was getting by. He was functional. At least that’s what I think he said.

And I guess that’s where I think we, as members of the interactive industry, are resting at the moment. Glowing in our vague Web 2.0 awareness, we are functional.  We’re getting by.  We lived through a time of extreme and chaotic experimentation, then the bubble burst, and a lot of us got scared, and now we’re resting on the resulting knowledge base. We’re content in our current understanding of Interactive Language. It’s even reassuring after all that unknown expansiveness of the mid 90s.

Well, I’m not at all happy about that. From where I sit, innovation, real creative innovation, the kind of innovation that expands the language and changes everything, has cooled to a quiet drip.  We’ve fallen into a process of dull incrementalism. And yet-

We have a long way to go before the children born today will cut us the slack we’ll want 10 years from now.

Before they look at what we’re doing with a nostalgic understanding, as opposed to the snort and rolling eyes I think we deserve at the moment.  

In this nascent age of MultiTouch interaction, what have you done, what has your company done to expand our language?  

I hope, as time passes, and I manage to extricate the concepts and principles I’ve been sitting on and researching during my years in this industry, I can participate, in some way, in expanding your appreciation for Interactive Language. 

It’s what this blog is meant to do.