USER-FRIENDLY:

IT IS WHAT IT IS, I AM WHAT I AM, AND SO ARE YOU: Human beings are social creatures with a natural empathy for others, and our behaviour is what helps us enter the flow of life. Hands up who likes to smile; our actions define our emotions. Laughter is about social connection, when we smile our hearts are moved, endorphins are released in our brains and we experience some kind of truth in the nature of things.

More than any other previous form of expression, interactive multimedia gives us the ability to make the user take control of his or her own 'DEPTH PERCEPTION' on any given subject. This is the facility we must learn to apply when writing and designing for multimedia, and it takes us beyond the limitations of the traditional audience/spectator experience.

At first sight, an interface should deliver a confident 'CAN DO' message. It should contain a sense of readiness, a unique and certain quality of purpose, approachability and effectiveness. This much-coveted 'User-Friendliness' is best achieved by a consistency in graphics, shapes, sounds, textures, colour schemes, layout of pages and screens, navigation metaphors and movements through the application. Whenever we come across a new concept that is particularly complex, multimedia writers and designers must be willing to experiment with expressing that idea in a new and sensory way.

Effortless is what you’re aiming for. It is critical that multimedia users are given all the necessary information that they may not be familiar with, because the interactivity of an application may not be self evident; e.g. imagine the facility to give the rules of a game to a user who hasn't played before. Whatever the subject matter, visual and aural input are the means at your disposal,
and the writer must totally engage the user with their senses, offering choices that cause emotional responses, from interactive web-sites, electronic promo kits (EPK), Playstation games, immersive 3D cinema experiences, etc.

In the 1970’s, Marshal MacLuhan wrote that “The medium is the message.” Via interactivity, the audience now participates and responds within the medium. We are no longer separated from the message, instead we are living and breathing it.

Answer these primary questions to start getting user-friendly:

• How will this application be used? Is it a CD, a web-kiosk, a web-site?

• Why is an interactive appropriate? What can the user gain from this application?

• What features are useful to users? Is it an enjoyable experience?

• How will the application be assessed before mass production?

• What happens after general market release? Does it need to be upgraded?

Very PRECISE PLANNING and exact programming is needed when you structure a hypertext document.

Here are some useful definitions and subjects to consider:

• ICONS: The dictionary defines icon as an image or statue of reverence, which itself is regarded as sacred, or a person/object of conscious desire. In interactivity an icon is a small word, graphic logo or symbol that appears as an indicator on the desktop, usually as a button for opening files, links and applications. Icons are symbolic images that connect to the instinctive impulses of every individual, regardless of nationality, helping to reduce translation problems – the fewer words the better. Each icon/link should be a common metaphor, (colour scheme and navigation method) from screen to screen. Clients can under-estimate the effect of harmonious colours, graphics and sounds on their audience.

• SCREENS: Usually contain text, photos, graphics, hypermedia (hotspots and buttons), other interactive icons and multimedia elements (slide shows, animation, narration, etc.) Consider different sorts of transitions, in keeping with the subject and style of the project.

• ANIMATION: Excellent for colour and movement, and it downloads quickly. It should give the audience what they expect in a different way, and also what they don’t expect. Use the speed and colour of exaggerated cartoon effects, get the user’s attention and create understanding with sharp visual communication.

• VIDEO: Should be harmonious or not used at all. It is powerful but expensive, so only use video if it adds to the overall application. Be careful to balance picture quality with file size.

• SOUND: Should always be of the highest possible quality, appropriate to the style and goals of the application. Be consistent in your sources; don’t try to mix high resolution and low-resolution sound and vision together, unless you’re looking for a discordant style. Precise co-ordination of sounds with other multimedia elements has a lot of impact. It can go very badly when sound and vision are out of synch. Consider applications carefully for standards of delivery, re; sound and vision, and label the size and types of file clearly.

• FOOTPRINTS: Advisable to let the user know where they currently are, where they have been, and where they can go from here. Try to invent imaginative places where these paths and stepping-stones can go, other than the routine or obvious. Be 'Real & Unusual' equally.

• INTERFACE: This refers to the capture, manipulation and integration of digital material into a single-user environment. It is not just the computer screen, but the broader contexts (both physical and intertextual) in which we receive information; the design of software and hardware.

• CONTENT AND CONTEXT: A definition that relates to the way MULTIMEDIA IS ABOUT INFORMATION and the way information is presented. It is about the environment in which the audience 'uses' the information. This environment is capable of allowing trial-and-error exploration, or intuition-friendly navigation, through 3D transitions.

• METATEXTUALITY: This concerns the relationship of 'commentary'. Take into account the possible changes in performative power and the question we should be asking is: What if commentaries could have direct impact on the texts they are commenting upon? Obviously the impact doesn't have to be of the kind its originators think it has or believe it should be. Let's say you criticize a work of art as being perverted and politically incorrect, and as a result of your activity it turns out to be even more perverted. Everything that doesn't kill it, makes it stronger.

There are many other obvious possibilities here; e.g. we may turn any metatextual piece into just another layer of text with or without changing it. Basically all this comes down to the difference between commenting and commanding. Their combination can easily be self-destructive; e.g. a metatext may cause the string of signs it cites to be deleted for good and consequently destroy its own value as commentary. This value is challenged by various other reasons as well. In certain encounters with indeterminate cybertexts, commentaries may turn out to be about one's own singular experience of ephemeral constellations of signs never to be repeated.

• MULTIPLICITY: The web provides facilities for building multiple views of hypertext applications that are linked with other modes within applications. This 'multiple views effect' on narration opens up literature to many interpretations of the same text. With alternative routes there is a never-ending array of possibilities. In print this multiple alternative or branching narrative was first used in Julio Cortazar's novel, Hopscotch (1966). John Irving's The World According to Garp (1976) also offers stories within stories.

In the 1980's there were the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, which were widely available in children’s books with their binary decision points, encoded within portions of the text. The reader takes partial control of the stories direction. Meaning becomes transcribed by the reader dependent upon which view, or now with the Internet, with what application is being used.

OH-OH! BLACK HOLE: Here is where we come across the exponential problem of too many links with far too many endings available to ever attempt to use every one. Mathematically, narratives can break down with too many links. To have a choice in a one-page story, there would be a resulting three pages, the opening page and the two possible continuations.

To have a five-page story there would be thirty-one pages of choices. But a dozen pages could lead to over four thousand pages of choices, with a forty-page novella needing a trillion pages of material. Queneau's sonnets are the results of selecting randomly from ten possibilities for each line in each sonnet. Again, it is the reader who is the ultimate creator.

"I am large...I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman

With all this in mind, we should consider our resources, select a destination and plot our course.