Designing the Streaming Media Future
Moore knows a great deal about this subject. She is co-investigator with Professor Ron Baecker of the ePresence Lab that has developed an interactive webcasting infrastructure. Moore and others in the lab study the impacts of a variety of information, communication and collaboration technologies in everyday life and apply what they see in the design of new communications tools. She contends that the successful experiences we will offer with streaming media in the next generation will be based on an understanding of sociology and anthropology and that working with the people who will ultimately use the content (or, in the case of product architects, a content creation system) is an important element of designing content as well as tools. By studying how people approach the process of building compelling rich media experiences and interacting in these environments, next generation products will automate laborious steps and permit users to experiment where currently they cannot.
Moore is in good company. Some of the world’s thought leaders in the field of computer human interfaces for 21st century communications tools are also faculty at the University of Toronto in Toronto. For example, Bill Buxton, an award-winning designer and a world renowned researcher in the human aspects of technology, is one such faculty member. Lucy Suchman, an anthropologist who spent 20 years at Xerox PARC and later won the prestigious Benjamin Franklin medal for her contributions to computer and cognitive science, is a Visiting Professor at KMDI. And Toronto was the home of Marshall McLuhan, who attracted global attention for his original contributions to understanding media.
Through programs like that offered at the KMDI, we—as a community—have the opportunity to aim higher and farther than we are reaching today. Streaming media producers who, like the research team at the University of Toronto, engage with people in a meaningful way will gain a new awareness of the numerous ways to enrich the learning and working experience. "When we overcome our current fascination with the nuts and bolts of getting media into and around the digital domain," Moore explains, "we will begin to tap the potential of ‘knowledge media’ to enhance creativity and learning."
Visit the Knowledge Media Design Institute’s Web site to get a feel for what "knowledge media" are and read some of the works below. Then, ask yourself if your current streaming media projects are reaching their potential.
Recommended Reading
Finn, K., Sellen, A.J. & Wilbur, S. (Eds.) (1997) Video-Mediated Communications. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.
Jacko, Julie A. (2003) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook : Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Norman, Donald A. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things. New York, NY: Basic Books
Norman, Donald A. (1993) Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
Preece, Jenny (2002) Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. New York, NY : J. Wiley & Sons
Suchman, Lucy (1987) Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press