The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software [Paperback]

Chris Crawford (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1886411840 | ISBN-13: 978-1886411845 | Publication Date: December 2002 | Edition: 1st

An understanding of what makes things interactive is key to the successful creation of websites, computer games, and software. In The Art of Interactive Design, Chris Crawford explains what interactivity is, how it works, why it's important, and how to design good software and websites that are truly interactive. Crawford's colloquial, conversational style makes it easy to grasp the fundamentals and the theoretical underpinnings of interactivity, as he discusses specific social and artistic issues.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Chris Crawford's 'The Art of Interactive Design' rewards extended exploration...its worth your time to read this book. -- Marc Garrett, since1968.com, June 24, 2003

"Crawford is a fine writer with an engaging style that never glosses over the tough points, never slows you down." -- Dr. Dobb's Programmer's Bookshelf Newsletter, August 5, 2004

"Crawford's breezy, conversational style makes it easy to grasp the fundamentals and the theoretical underpinnings of interactivity..." -- The Columbus Dispatch (Jan. 2003)

About the Author

Chris Crawford is the "grand old man" of computing game design. He sold his first computer game in 1978, joined Atari in 1979, and led Games Research there. During his time at Atari, he wrote the first edition of "The Art of Computer Game Design" (Osborne, 1984), which has now become a classic in the field. After Atari collapsed in 1984, Chris became a freelance computer game designer. All in all, Chris has 14 published computer games to his credit--all of which he designed and programmed himself. He founded, edited, and wrote most of "The Journal of Computer Game Design," the first periodical devoted to game design. He founded and led the Computer Game Developers' Conference (now the Game Developers' Conference) in its early years. Chris has lectured on game design at conferences and universities all over the world. For the last ten years, he has been developing technology for interactive storytelling.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1st edition (December 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886411840
• ISBN-13: 978-1886411845
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Multimedia Information Systems

More About the Author

Chris Crawford earned a Master of Science degree in Physics from the University of Missouri in 1975. After teaching physics for several years, he joined Atari as a game designer in 1979. There he created a number of games: Energy Czar, an educational simulation about the energy crisis, Scram, a nuclear power plant simulation, Eastern Front (1941), a wargame, Gossip, a social interaction game, and Excalibur, an Arthurian game.
Following the collapse of Atari in 1984, Crawford took up the Macintosh. He created Balance of Power, a game about diplomacy, Patton Versus Rommel, a wargame, Trust & Betrayal, a social interaction game, Balance of the Planet, an environmental simulation game, and Patton Strikes Back, a wargame. In 1992, Crawford decided to leave game design and concentrate his energies on interactive storytelling, a field that he believed would become important. He created a major technology for interactive storytelling systems, patenting it in 1997. He is now commercializing his technology at his company website at storytron.com.
Crawford has written five published books: The Art of Computer Game Design, now recognized as a classic in the field, in 1982; Balance of Power (the book) in 1986; The Art of Interactive Design in 2002; Chris Crawford on Game Design in 2003; and Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling in 2004.
He created the first periodical on game design, the Journal of Computer Game Design, in 1987. He founded and served as Chairman of the Computer Game Developers' Conference, now known as the Game Developers' Conference.
Crawford has given hundreds of lectures at conferences and universities around the world, and published dozens of magazine articles and academic papers.
Crawford served as computer system designer and observer for the 1999 and 2002 NASA Leonid MAC airborne missions; he also has done some analysis of the resulting data. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife, 3 dogs, 7 cats, 2 ducks, and 3 burros.
His current work is in interactive storytelling. After seventeen years of work, Crawford's company, Storytron, is releasing its technology to the public at www.storytron.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem of a Book, January 22, 2003

By 

paul catanese (chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software (Paperback)

Crawford is one of those intellectual gems who is often overlooked by the swirling tumult of art-star-authors and lexicon-twisting new media theorists. His work is outstanding; and this book is no exception. I originally bought this book when it was marketed as "Understanding Interactivity" - the facelift is quite nice, but the invaluable information is still, well, invaluable.

This book has the unique capability of crystalizing the key elements of interactivity (from a real-world standpoint) so that first year students are able to understand the overarching concepts (I use the book in my Interactive Multimedia classes). But, like any great book, it accomodates and grows along with the experience and knowledge of the reader. There is much to gain from Crawford's lucid, intriguing and well thought out text - and I recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the creation of artwork that incorporates or addresses interactivity.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good on the other side of the author's idiosyncracies, January 24, 2006

By 

Patrick Thompson (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software (Paperback)

Ah the philosophical musings of Chris Crawford...

If you're looking for a Interaction cookbook- see Alan Cooper's about face 2.0 (isbn 0764526413), because this isn't that. Far from it. This is a book that seeks to stick an idea in your face and then get you to think about it rather than just spoon feeding you, like a good little pleb. Sure there's lashings of righteous indignation and condemnation aplenty (and given the state of some software it's not undeserved!) Again, provocation to think and construct mental arguments (or vocal if you're that way inclined) is not a bad thing. It's a very good thing: active learning is far more rewarding than passive acceptance.

So Chris Crawford relates his thoughts, ideas, feelings, hates and a thousand other things in a rather amorphous form in this book. While it is not tightly structured (very waffling in parts), I don't think that is suffers too much from that- indeed the lack of totally rigid form often enhances rather than debilitates (flexibility!). Though he can struggle to fully chase the tail of an idea: perhaps that is deliberate, leaving it up to us to do that. And sometimes his thoughts seem misguided, incomplete or just plain wrong or couched in language that makes it largely inaccessible to some (odd coming from somebody trying to engage reader that they would choose such a tactic that prevents engagement). And yes, at times, you do get the impression that you are being ranted at or this guy is trying to talk down to you (a thesaurus doesn't make you literate- the ability to 'speak' to your audience and have them understand is far more of a yardstick (oops, I should say 'metric' to be up on the vernacular) in that regard).

Content wise: there is a lot here that is of considerable importance. I particular like the chapter on 'Play', because as an educator (book he cites is Homo ludens: A study of the play element of a culture, Johan Huizinga), I agree whole heartedly with that and see that revealed in the mess some of my colleagues make of educating others by taking all of the fun/play out of it (I teach Mathematics and Physics). I also liked the simplicity yet depth of the 'speak-think-listen' notion. Too much nowadays it's all speak, little thought and no listen. And when that happens, we just MEGO (my eyes glaze over).

At times he struggles to idea of how he tries to pull this unwieldy construct he has built into a cohesive pile (it's a concept like a slippery pig- grab it just so and you're okay, change your hold just a little and it's off...). Some of it is unneccessary: the clock chapter, dedicated devices, history of interactivity, why learn programming. Some of it is belabored: particularly behaviors, linkmeshes, linguistics, erasmus. Yet, ironically enough, they still make the book a richer experience because they provide context. And this is important. So while is writing style may not be perfect, his approach has much merit. And I think the book works. It seeks to not only open your eyes to interactivity, but provide some philosophical underpinnings for adopting a proactive approach when trying to incorporate that into design mindset. In other words, it seeks to put interactivity at the center of the things you do, not as an add on.

And I think Chris Crawford does manage to get that message across (if a little self-importantly and in a stilted manner). I think, while his love of language is fairly obvious, his choices in this regard can be a little poor at times and self-aggrandizing, which can place barriers on your acceptance of his work. Just bear that in mind and factor some of the language and tone out, because if you do, I think you can get a lot from this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lots of hand-wringing and hand-waving, little substance, July 25, 2005

By 

David Obrien (San Diego) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software (Paperback)

Having just finished Jef Raskin's disappointing "The Humane Interface", I looked forward to reading this one. After all, Chris Crawford is a legendary game designer, whose Balance Of Power I played to death in the Eighties. Here was someone who should be able to (a) engage me and (b) show me some novel ways to think about software design in general and interactivity in particular.

Sad to say, I was wrong. The book starts promisingly with CC talking about interactivity as conversation (listen, think, speak), but from there he meanders off on a host of barely related topics, talking at length about each one while rarely giving concrete examples (problems, solutions, issues, etc.). I know it's not supposed to be a cookbook of UI methods, but there has to be *something* to grab onto once in a while.

It's all hand waving, and it gets old fast. I forced myself to read to the end, to see if it improved, but it didn't. The only thing he's terse about is his own work (software for interactive storytelling), a potentially fascinating topic that he glosses over in 2 pages.

I read UI books with a highlighter, marking key ideas or examples that I want to return to later and think about. Usually this means a highlight every 10 pages or so. This book ended up with 3 marks in the first 50 pages, and nothing after that.

For me, at least, 99% of this book was a waste of time.