The new media age has become a core phenomenon in modern societies worldwide, shaping the lives of people in conducting work, business and pleasure. The new media can be defined as a form of new culture that rely on computers and networking for presentation and dissemination of information and media related content.
Some of the commonly used cultural forms are web sites, social media like facebook and twitter, multimedia, databases, computer games and animations and to a lesser extent, virtual reality. In today’s culture of information and media, there is permanence and crumbling of both old and new media.
The new media exists due to foundations laid by the old media and it's language but is coming to its own, breaking from its roots, breaking new ground and changing the way we think . The distinctive feature about the new media is its capacity to create a virtual world of information that, in the case of the internet, exists in server clouds worldwide but visualised at a computer, ipad or smart phone at every corner of the globe. This illusion of reality that is organised and structured has transformed human experience.
The big loser in the rise of the new media is the old print media. People have just lost confidence in print media as global corporate owners have used and abused their newspaper outlets trying to control public opinion, printing propaganda and even openly lying. Favouring right wing conservatives who have their own agenda and self interests. People are now just going online and have plenty of choice with many news services, social media , bloggers and websites worldwide all telling their story. Old media such photography and cinema have in some ways reinvented themselves and converged into a media revolution. This media revolution has considerably enhanced the scope of visual culture and new avenues of expression have opened up to artists.
Another feature of the media revolution is interactivity which is increasingly becoming one of the most important aspects of the new media especially on the internet. The nature of incorporating interactivity requires a greater understanding of the interactive experience. There are different theories that deal with symbolic (mind) and non-symbolic (body) interaction ⱡ. Experience has shown that each interaction with an interactive object or machine, there is at work a perception of interactive behaviour, uncovering new information about the cognitive process involved in interaction design.
The implication on the training of interaction designers is noticeable since interaction design is a new craft for the graphics design artist and the computer programmer. The interaction designer must have some competence in visual design and programming and also possess a good sense of machine to human interactive process. He or she should have an understanding of the interactive machine or program and be a good kinaesthetic thinker. Also an element of empathy with regards to correctly interpreting the interactive experiences of users is crucial to develop a well rounded satisfactory machine or program.
The World Wide Web is a prime example of where the good interaction design needs to be applied and not just a collection of clickable printed pages. However web page designers have traditionally been trained in web language programming, and graphics designers have been trained only in graphic arts. The interactive website demands a combination of both these areas of expertise and till lately people with such qualifications are missing. Both these groups were untrained in the aspects of interactive media between users and web pages as a core phenomenon. While one group knows how to build web pages, and the other knows about laying out text and graphics, that professional body of knowledge that underscores interaction design does not exist. But this is changing, interaction design and the principles underlying it will be a core subject for future web and graphics designers to master.
At Bluegroper Web Development we have solved this problem by combining the work of a graphic designer and the web language programmer through ready made web templates or themes. Structured through the use of a popular open source content management system (CMS) like Drupal, Joomla!, Magento or OpenCart can create a powerful and interactive website.
ⱡ symbolic (mind) and non-symbolic (body) interaction:
Symbolic interactionism - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_interactionism