Throughout my time of reading Chapter one of this story, I couldn’t help but remember an old Star Wars game that I used to play when I was a little kid with a Nintendo DS. The game, in question, went by the name of “Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga”, where there was a level in the game’s chapter based on the 3rd Star Wars prequel, Revenge of the Sith, where I was Anakin Skywalker in his yellow plane and I was supposed to fly to a certain destination; however, there was this section of the level where there was a holographic border wall that no matter how hard i tried, i couldn’t bypass it and move on to the next. If I had a dollar for every minute I spent trying to shoot down said wall in order to get through, I’d have enough to buy a $15 burger with fries; not to mention the amount of times in which I tried taking a shortcut around the border wall, but that move was sadly no use! This moment was driving me nuts because the border wall looked as if it shouldn’t be too hard to pass by, but I was having trouble figuring out if I had to either shoot something to disable it or bring something with me to disarm it. After so long, my own brother had to step in and help me figure out that the way to bypass this border wall is by grabbing a purple ball of energy with me and drop it off somewhere near a hexagon shaped bowl that would deactivate the border wall without difficulty. Despite completing the level successfully, I still look back into this memory and think that perhaps there should’ve been some sort of highly responsive clue that would’ve given me an idea of what I should consider finding it in order to move forward through the level faster. I could imagine a mini transparent blue box popping near my Nintendo DS screen popping up and informing me that I need to find this certain ball of energy in order to move forward in the level. Therefore, because of the frustrating situation of this memory of mine, that is why I believe that the idea of signifier, or at least examples of it, should be explained a little more in the reading because the idea can be applicable for any game similar to the one I played where someone is stuck in a section of level and needs a clue about what to do or what to find, similar to my past issue.
All in all, the main principle that I want to try applying into a few of my sketches in interactive media, if possible, is the principle of signifiers. This is because that someone were to face a sketch of mine that required them to activate something via clicking or hovering over an area, but have no idea as to what they must focus on doing in order to achieve said-task, then perhaps a mini clue of sorts should be of existence in order to assist their understanding without holding their hand too much. One has to remember that not all humans share the same intelligence and/or critical thinking skills. It will always be a gamble between whether they are met with a tricky task but are capable of finding out what it is they must do, or they are NOT able to figure out the right course of actions and are in-need of a little hint as to what is the recommended action for them to conduct. It’s as the saying that I think of in my mind goes: the clearer something is without giving too much away, the better performance that you will be able to do in an interactive scenario.
The main idea, from my understanding, is the fact that what makes a video game interactive as it should be is if it is willing to assist the user/player in figuring the right course of action for a task that they are not sure how they must accomplish. The whole thing of an interactive program and the user is for the both of them to be able to communicate with each in order to ensure that they understand each other. Besides, without any tip to help the user move forward in the interactive program, they might as well be staring at a sketch that they cannot interact with any further; something that would make the sketch look like a regular art piece rather than interactive one. Thus, some kind of signifier as to how one can move forward in an interactive program, just like how they’d move forward in a video game, will surely help the sketch stay true to its interactive nature. Overall, these are the thoughts that I’ve gathered from the reading.