(Perceived) Interactivity: Does Interactivity Increase Enjoyment and Creative Identity in Artistic Spaces?

By Amy L. Gonzales, Thomas Finley, and Stuart Paul Duncan

Summary:
This paper tested user interaction and its correlation to user satisfaction, as well as interaction promoting a self-conception of user creativity. The goal of the study was to test two research questions in an experimental context:

1. How does interactive art impact user satisfaction?
2. How does interactive art shape the self-concept of the user as creative?

The authors believed that interaction with an installed art system would give users more satisfaction and promote a self-concept of creativity as opposed to a non interactive art installation. The art installation that they used was a room that hosted two participants at a time and played a combination of musical sounds, which for the interactive users could be changed according to a set of physical motions transferred through Wiimotes. The User Study that they conducted tested over 71 pairs of participants whom were told to experience the art installation and then later reflect on their experience through the form of a questionnaire.

The results of the study proved that the users who reported that the system was interactive also reported that they enjoyed it more than those who could not interact with it. However both the interactive and non-interactive participants reported relatively similar results in that they didn't feel more creative after experiencing the system. Some of the possible reasons that the authors gave to explain this were that the art system did not offer a wide enough range of influence to truly let the user feel creative, another being that users were never prompted to try to be creative while experiencing the system, or perhaps that the self-concept of creativity was secluded to just the experience with the installation, and did not carry with the user afterward, and a final suggestion 'that interactive art does not actually induce a sense of creativity as otherwise presumed'.

Discussion:
I think the study they conducted was quite good. I do agree with their conclusion that an interactive art installment is more enjoyable than a non-interactive one. Another thing I liked about this study is that they tested using musical sounds because I believe that music is a great medium for testing things such as emotional experience and creativeness. I do think that their second question was answered correctly by their user study, and that the self-concept of creativeness is confined to the actual experience with the art installation. If they did the test again except expanded on the ability of the user to impact the music I believe they would have seen better results for the first question and similar for the second unless they prompted the users to be creative.