STAND AND DELIVER

by Denise Caruso

c. I.D. Magazine

Aside from this year's I.D. Magazine winners and a few other worthy 
exceptions (which offer a narrow yet brilliant ray of hope), most of the titles 
and Web sites passing themselves off as interactive media today aren't worth 
turning on the computer for. They are grossly overcommercialized, horribly 
designed digital junk, banal to the point of being offensive, and begotten not 
of love or passion, but of fear of being left stranded on the banks of some 
newly sprung (and, I might add, yet to materialize) river of profit.

Ach.

If you haven't been watching this situation unfold over the past few years, 
you might not even know that the straits were not always so dire. There was a 
time, back in the early days of interactive media -- we called it "multimedia" 
back then -- when almost everything we saw fairly dripped with art or 
passion, always with aspiration to some higher purpose.

And even given the relative crudity of the tools back in the Neanderthal era 
of the early 1980s, many of the projects were designed with such elegance that 
you took to the experience, which then was radically new, as naturally as a 
duck to water.

All those fabulous early projects -- from Apple's Multimedia Lab, Voyager, 
Living Books -- made it easy to believe the first wave of adulatory hype, that 
multimedia would save our educational system, inspire adult learning and 
break down national borders by connecting all the world's citizens with each 
other and with all the world's knowledge. It was joyful, thrilling stuff.

But now we're in danger of being buried alive in slag heaps of unsold CD-
ROMs, or drowning in the tidal wave of electrons that assemble themselves 
into Web sites on computer screens all around the world, flashing and 
honking and spewing endless data at us for no apparent reason.

To call this turn of events enervating would not be putting too fine a point 
on it. So what happened?

For starters, when big media and publishing companies saw media on a 
computer screen they thought Judgment Day had arrived: "Sound, pictures 
and text? Hey, that's our stuff! Digitized and lifted from the physical media 
that gave them substance and shelf space? Created and even distributed on 
these damn computers that we loathe, can't control and refuse to use? We'll 
be obsolete!"

To stave off this dark terror, they frantically poured money into interactive 
media -- declaring it a new mass medium long before anyone even knew 
what "it" was. Along with premature commercialization came a second curse: 
interactive projects headed by old-media designers who took pride in 
knowing as little as possible about computers or technology, or -- even more 
annoying -- little baby twenty-something Web programmers commanding 
incredibly high fees to know nothing about the existing body of knowledge of 
interactive media or software design.

In both cases, the results were predictable.

Good interactive design requires an understanding of many disciplines: user 
interface design, software programming, symbolics, psychology and 
architecture, in addition to traditional graphic and visual design. Suzanne 
Stefanac, executive producer of the Web site for the MSNBC cable show called 
The Site, says good interactive media design is like a 3-D chess game -- you 
have to be able to visualize, and help people transit through, the information 
in all dimensions to be successful.

Contrary to popular belief, you also don't have to reinvent the wheel. One of 
my favorite interactive design veterans was ranting the other day about the 
staggering amount of arrogance and ignorance in the business, now that it's 
become chic.

"All these Web designers think that nothing happened before three years ago, 
before the Web," she says. "No one's ever designed an interface before. They 
sit in meetings and say, 'Well, I like this. I like that.' I finally yelled at them, 'I 
don't care what you like! This isn't for you! What kind of experience are you 
creating for the people who are going to use it?'"

It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, to truly engage another human's 
brain for a few minutes or, if you're really good, for a few hours. But it can be 
done.

I remember one Saturday in 1990, being cranky about having to work on a 
beautiful San Francisco afternoon -- and especially cranky because I had to 
review some new Voyager disk called Exotic Japan.

I had no yen to explore Japanese culture that day, but I did have a newsletter 
to put to bed, so I sat down and stuck the CD-ROM in the computer. The next 
time I looked up three hours had passed: I'd been completely immersed. And 
I learned stuff about Japan that I've never forgotten.

These time-warp experiences should be the goal of good interactive media. 
Nowadays I can have the same experience with almost anything that Corbis 
or Voyager does (most recently, Leonardo da Vinci knocked my socks off), and 
in fact had the same experience this afternoon with the Word Web site, one 
of this year's Interactive Media Design Review winners.

So, if I may be so bold as to ask, what's stopping the rest of you?

If you believe that interactive media is a discipline or even a craft, then start 
treating it like one. Go back to school, or send your designers back to school, 
into programs where they learn that they weren't one of the first 12 people in 
the world to design interactive media. Seek out the research done by pioneers 
in their various fields, people like Kristina Hooper Woolsey, Sueann 
Ambron, Terry Winograd, Fernando Flores, Brenda Laurel, Donald Norman, 
Richard Saul Wurman and many others.

Find the best multimedia titles and pay attention to your experience of them 
-- first as a user, then as a designer. If you wanted to be a filmmaker, wouldn't 
you want to study the work of the masters? And after you've armed yourself 
with some real knowledge, pay closer attention to each other's work, too. 
Start a formal critique process; be tough on, and learn from, each other.

Chris Crawford, one of the earliest video game designers, who hails from the 
golden days of Atari, said he believes we are witnessing one of the greatest 
design revolutions in history. It only takes a few experiences like Body 
Voyage or The Neverhood to know how absolutely right he is.

And despite my overloaded immune system, I've finally decided not to give 
up hope. The tide turned for me during a session of the class on interactive 
media that I teach at Stanford University.

I realized that nearly a decade later, despite oceans of mediocre products in an 
oversaturated market, the basics hadn't changed -- a new generation of 
students were still passionate about, fascinated by, eager to dissect and devour 
everything there is to know about interactive media. They're chomping at the 
bit to get out there and make some truly great stuff, stuff that moves and 
inspires them. And to that kind of passion, I gladly acquiesce.