The care and feeding of users

Abstract

S igmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, once remarked, "The only thing about America that interests me is Coney Island." Freud was not alone in his interest. Over the course of a century, hundreds of millions of visitors found pleasant diversion in that vast acreage-larger than most cities-crammed with an urban density of competing commercial attractions.

Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology

“…By constantly introducing new combinations, the boundaries between communication, entertainment, commerce, and information fade: advertisements on informative sites, information on game sites, and games on informative pages. Davenport and Bradley (1997) compare the web to an amusement park. The visitor to the latter is surrounded by attractions, temporarily allowing her to forget the limiting daily reality of embodiment and social relations.…”

Designing collaborative virtual environments based on real spaces to promote community interaction

“…Davenport & Bradley [6] argue that we are bridging the gap between real and virtual worlds as researchers explore new forms of computer-mediated interactions among people, bits, and atoms. Designers are creating tangible user interfaces -digitally augmented spaces, surfaces, objects, and instruments-that make bits physically accessible and managed via graspable objects and ambient media.…”