Opinion: What is "Interactivity"?

Today's issue of PCSpeed cites children’s author, Julia Donaldson, on why she has decided not to put her award winning, Gruffalo, into eBook format. According to Julia, when children discover that touching a certain hidden button will make the character’s neck grow then they just spend their time “fiddling with the wretched button” and not reading or listening to the story.  On this point, I have to say, I totally agree. 

But there are gimmicks.  And there is interaction. 

The issue, really, is how the children's book industry currently interprets the notion of “interaction”. 

Too many of today’s eBooks and book Apps are laced with gimmicks – bells and whistles, buttons and doo-dads – posing as interactive elements. Finding the button that will make the dog’s tail wag or the bird fly or the gnome do a back flip is fun, but doesn’t add anything to the story and, as Julia maintains, may even detract from it.

True interaction, I believe, should open the world of the story up to another layer of thinking and doing that has the potential to teach. Interactive elements connect with and collaborate with the story, leading the reader to a related experience that, once completed, brings them back to the story once again.

Interaction in its purest definition is two-way communication; it's a give and take. As it relates to digital books, interactivity should never be the end goal of user participation – touch the dog so the tail wags – but should enhance the user’s experience and engagement with story – touch the dog to make it run to the right corner, grab it in its teeth, and turn the page. Above all, interactivity should never take over the role of the reader’s active imagination, but should encourage the reader to imagine beyond the page.

This is how we think about interactivity at the Time Traveler Tours. Some will fault our product, saying there is not enough animation.  Rather, what our StoryApps provide are intellectual challenges, didactic games, and scavenger hunts that serve the story, enhance the user’s experience of it and allow for learning and engagement in a fun, stress-free way.  With Time Traveler Tours you approach history through story and learn without knowing you are learning. Archival images from the era in question are highlighted throughout not for their back-flipping gnomes and fluttering birds, but for their merits as works of art and/or historical propaganda. 

While I agree with Julia Donaldson’s point of view and admire her unwillingness to join the crowd just for the sake of it, I would also urge her to imagine how the Gruffalo could be truly interactive.  No doubt there are myriad ways.  We just haven't thought of them yet.

Thanks to Julia Donalsohn and Axel Scheffler for use of the Gruffalo image.

Click here to purchase the Gruffalo from Amazon.co.uk!

If you liked this post, you may also like our opinion piece: "Is the Book Dying?"