Jeanyoon Choi

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Button-based interaction and amplified interaction

Updated: 2/8/2025

To construct successful semantic interaction, it’s important to get most of information/parameters as possible from a single simple user interaction - sometimes it can be as simple as a button click. Yes, literally a button click within the commercialised UI.
Button usually only has boolean factors - true/false, on/off. When mixed with other buttons, it might indicate more categorical value. But usually it has true/false value and thus when false → true it triggers some kind of action. In this case, the amount of information that a button can process is 1 bit.
The information is gathered more when you press multiple buttons in combination - also can give more context. But still, pressing a button and presenting corresponding output is too much of a naive idea… Not very interesting
That’s the reason why we can contain a new dimension of interaction - under assumption that the button is pressable for a long period of time, and that the user is clearly nudged/indicated of the fact, we can use the time of pressing and holding the button.
The temporal dimension of this button-based interaction creates two dimensions; One boolean, another numerical. If combined as sequence, it creates more dimensions- Think about the possibility of how these dimensions can be combined to create immersive interactions.
One of the most intuitive interaction: Button clicked, and the video plays (Used in passage of water). Or the system ignites and starts to evolve on its own. Naturally the user might do another interaction: moving the finger a little bit, and the manner of evolution changes accordingly!
Multiple buttons - all corresponding to a single system/sub-system/screen (within the context of multi-device web artwork). Do the same as a single button - now multiple systems get a sort of ‘attention’ (when the button is pressed) - and it competes with each other for its attention (or naturally such competitive landscape is created). Users enjoy a natural immersion within this process - of how screens, which initially started from pure black, are now evolving at a different speed in a different style, based on their interaction.
This is connected to the idea of Mobile Jockey/iPad Jockey.
Inspired from Disco Jockey (DJ), same but within computational interface.
Original Idea: iPad. Multiple buttons on the pad. As user skims/slides through multiple buttons, each button corresponds to the interconnected mobile/screen within multi-device web artwork, and when each button is clicked - the corresponding device acts accordingly audio-visually. Creating a sort of a harmonic music inter-device wise.
More general approach: There is a mobile/ipad or any other touch interface. (Can be also laptop - pointer based interface, but the interactive design will be a bit different). As users have 10 fingers, they can concurrently click 10 buttons at a same time. As each button is pressed - corresponding device, agent, or system is activated/evolving/proceeded, while others are paused/deactivated. User now controls the whole system like this accordingly.
This system is definitely influenced by Dark Matter’s Tone Ladder, Vincent morisset’s Bell Orchestra Sound House, and this is a non-interactive one - Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors. These systems are all in common: creating a multi-dimensional chord system, with each section/projector corresponding to a single melody (acting as a single system). And each system is activated based on a button-press-like interaction: when the user touches/lands an item, the chord is triggered. When multiple chords are triggered/activated, they create a beautiful system.
But my system is more than a tone trigger point, more than an activation - it’s more of an initiation of the whole system. And how the system is evolving, and how the user can activate this, conduct this situation playfully. It can contaminate deeper narrative and reasoning than the mono-dimensional tone trigger system.
These ideas also relate with the idea of amplified interaction - the theory on how the user likes amplified interaction as it magnitudes user’s will-to-power.


Text written by Jeanyoon Choi

Ⓒ Jeanyoon Choi, 2025