User:Cristinac/Notes2

all “pure” interactions must have:

1) interruptibility

– participants should be able to trade roles during the interaction, as speakers do in conversation, and not simply take turns in occupying the more active or more passive roles in the interaction;

2)  fine granularity

– participants should not have to wait for the “end” of something to interact, with true interactivity being interruptible at the granularity level of a single word;

3)  graceful degradation

– participants can still continue the interaction without interruption even if non sequiturs or unanswerable queries or requests enter into it;

4)  limited look-ahead

– goals and outcomes in the interaction cannot be completely pre- determined at the outset of the activity by either of the two parties, with the interaction created “on the fly,” or coming into being only at the moment gestures, words or actions are expressed;

5)  an absence of a single, clear-cut default path or action

– participants in the interaction cannot have definite recourse to a single or “default” path, one available to them throughout the interaction without their having to make any active decisions for action;

6)  the impression of an infinite database

– actors in an interaction need to be able to make decisions and take action from a wide range of seemingly endless possibilities (Brand 46-49).