This brief article was originally offered as part of an e-book that I provided to students taking my classes. It was intended to get them thinking about designing the interactive parts of their projects instead of just treating the hyperlink like it was the turning of a page in a book.

Before the computer became a common item in our everyday life, artists did not have to concern themselves too much with the concept of interactivity. The entire participation in the artistic experience, by the audience, was usually purely visual and mental. (I suppose that a strong argument could be made that if a mentally unstable artcritic physically attacked a painting in a museum, it could be said that he interacted with the work, but this would be an exception to the rule and not a very common occurrence.)

With the introduction of sophisticated electronics into our homes, the situation has become very different. Our culture practically demands the ability to participate in nearly any media experience, on an individual level. Back in the early days of video games we didn't think about how much we humans enjoyed influencing the outcome of our own stimulation. We just shot invading aliens (Space Invaders) or bounced a blip on the screen between two lines (Pong). But, now, influencing our own entertainment has become so much a part of our media experience that it is something that we have come to expect and demand. Web sites that do little don't get revisited very often and video games where players are actually participating in acting out a story line are often the best sellers. Even movies, recently released on DVD, include alternate endings. (If you think that you might like the story better if the bad guy gets away … just select a different ending!)

What all of this means for the designer is that not only must your work be visually interesting, but that you must also be an expert at creating an experience for your audience. The days of just being a good visual artist are all but gone. Now we must also wear the hats of movie directors and psychologists … and we have video games and the World Wide Web to blame (or thank) for making our job even more complicated.

It may be difficult to believe, but the Web page was designed to be interactive from its inception. Plain old HTML was originally conceived as an interactive way to obtain information offered up by the scientific community. Until the Web, scientific research meant that a person would have to read through mountains of papers and journals. It was almost assured that by the time the particular material that you were interested in had been through the long process of being published, (and you had finally gotten your hands on a copy) it was probably out of date. The idea behind the Web page was to provide a vehicle to make scientific work immediately available to other scientists around the world.

The innovative concept designed into the early Web was the hyperlink . In reality a hyperlink consists of just a tiny bit of HTML code, but it has completely changed the way that we take in information. Before the hyperlink existed, study was linear. If you were interested in a particular writing, you would obtain a copy and read it from the beginning to the end, while concentrating on the parts that were important to you. While reading, you might find a reference to another published work that dealt with the subject and you would then try to get your hands on a copy of that publication… and of course in that paper there would be a reference to another journal or article that might be helpful and you would have to try and get a copy of a third article. The hyperlink was made so that not only could you go directly to the part of a lengthy scientific paper that interested you, but then, with the click of a button, you could go directly to another article written by a scientist half way around the world that also applied to that specific section. As a result, information became divided in smaller bits of linked material and readers surfed through the writings that interested them.

It wasn't long until this new way of obtaining information spilled over to the world outside of the scientific community. Now, even while visiting the Web site of an extremely conservative corporation, you will see a series of links that can take you to wWeb documents that are divided into small nuggets of information. (I.e. products offered, services, how to contact the company, etc.)

As a good designer for electronic media you must keep this concept in mind. How will viewers move around your work? Will they find it confusing or will they be able to quickly get to the parts that they came there for? Do you want to lead them to specific parts of the Web site or are they pretty much on their own to find their way around? If interactivity plays a role in your work, you will spend nearly as much time designing, not only what a person sees, but how they navigate through your work.

At first this may seem a little overwhelming, but you will find that the same visual elements that apply to good design can also be used to guide a viewer through your work. If you can direct a person's eye around your design you can also direct where a person goes from there.