Blog Assignment 3: Interactivity

http://www.digitaldesign.us/howTo/interactivity.html

I found this article about interactivity interesting because it talks about how interactivity can increase the effectiveness of a website. The author talks about how expectations for websites are changing and that interactivity is important to give visitors what they want. Basically, the more interactive and engaging a website is the more successful it will be.

Interactivity for a website is important because it keeps visitors on the site longer, brings them back for future visits, and can create a "buzz" about the website. If there are things to interact with and activities to participate in on the site, then the user is likely to stay on and participate longer. With fun and exciting interactive options, such as chat boxes, polls, or games, the user is more likely to interact with the website and to return in the future. Additionally, if the user finds interactive options that intrigues them they are more likely to tell their friends or link the website from another site. This is very helpful when trying to gain a larger audience and create a "buzz" about the website.

I also found it interesting in the third article on AsUlearn titled "The effect of user interactivity on user experience" that said, even interactive options that people do not use will draw them to a website. Just by simply seeing something such as a chat box makes the user think that the website is more interactive which makes them more likely to return in the future. This just means that the mere appearance of visual cues may have the same effect as the actual use of interactive features.

I think that interactivity is difficult to measure, but can be determined to some degree. There are many variables that go into interactivity but some simple concepts can be observed. For example, interactivity could be measured simply by recording the number of users that visit a site and how many times they click on or interact with something. If you were able to track when a user revisited the site you could even see how successful the interactivity is in drawing the user back for future visits. The amount of users who visit a site is a good measurement of how successful the site is, but it might be difficult to determine how much each user is actually interacting with the site while they are on it.

Blog Assignment 2: Network Laws

I don't believe that any one of the laws can accurately determine the value of a network with all of the different variables we have today. However, I think that Reed's Law comes the closest to giving us the best estimate. Reed's Law basically states that a network size can increase exponentially determined by the number of users. I think this is a good estimate of a networks value because of how we see things go viral on the internet. If one person shares it to two people, then those people can share it to two more friends and so on. This is especially accurate on social media sites where one person can instantly share something to hundreds of people with the click of a button. However, this doesn't mean that every one of those people on theirs friends list will share or even see the content. This is why it makes it very difficult to determine an accurate measure of a networks value. With people using multiple social networks such as twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. it becomes even more difficult to measure a networks value.

In the next five years I believe that people will get their information the same way we do today, maybe just a little more streamlined. With more and more content becoming available online we may see a decrease in things such as physical magazines, books, and newspapers. It seem like more of these types of media keep moving to an online format that can easily be accessed from someones phone or computer. As more people access these things online the physical copies will become less common and may eventually go away all together. I'm sure we will see the development of more news applications and social networks in the next five years and there is no telling how they will impact how information is exchanged. It may get to the point where you can instantly share something to all of your social media sites at the same time, or maybe a social network that makes all others obsolete will come along. Either way, I feel that the process of gathering and sharing information will become faster and easier in the next five years.