02 Nov Why Are Some Interactive Applications Better than Others?
We have all come in contact with interactive applications beyond just our smart devices. Now a days you can walk through a mall, airport, dealership, or museum and come in contact with interactive kiosks and monitors. Some of these interactive experiences offer an animation and entertainment wow factor while others are designed to engage and inform users. The million dollar question is why do some of these applications seem to attract us and engage us much better than others?
At spinTouch we believe that there is a formula to creating an awesome interactive experience that users truly value, and this starts at the application level. You can find us listed as one of the Top California Software Development Companies on Design Rush. The holistic approach we apply involves three key features by where an application can attract, engage, and inspire users.
Attract – This is your opportunity to capture a passerby’s attention as they come in proximity of your interactive application. In most cases interactive applications lack in this department because the application seems to only have passive/non-interactive content, or the content is just flat out uninviting. We suggest you incorporate visually stimulating and attention worthy content that is relevant to your audience. This can be done through creating an exciting splash screen, animated content, or perhaps interactive silhouettes showing the passerby that your content is indeed interactive and worth their time.
Engage – After you have captivated the attention of your passerby and they are now ready to interact with your content, this is your opportunity to get them fully engaged and immersed in the messaging your application is delivering. Applications that do a great job of engaging users do so by making sure they continue to provide relevant content to users. They also obsess over incorporating authentic motion into the user interface. This means developing an intuitive layout, style, and animations into the application to enhance usability.
Inspire – The last part of this formula comes as a result of properly delivering on the first two. When a user enjoys interacting with your application and overall messaging, they become inspired to take action. If you have created an interactive retail application this action can be to purchase a product, or if you have created a marketing application their action can be to share this experience via social media and becoming advocated for your brand. When your user is inspired we call that a “win-win”, where both the person engaging with the content and the company behind the experience benefits.
So maybe it isn’t such a mystery why some interactive applications offer such a greater experience than others. The creators of these applications did their homework on their target audience and built on the three key interactive application fundamentals to attract, engage, and inspire. In most cases this means taking the interactive experience building process and turning it on its head and putting the creative elements first before focusing the hardware and pro a/v ins and outs.
Author: Alano Vasquez | Director of Digital Engagement | spinTouch
