Introducing Interactive Multimedia

Defining interactive multimedia

At its simplest, multimedia involves no more than the simultaneous use of two different media of communication. Most people accompany speech with body language comprising facial expressions and a variety of other movements. In that sense, most human communication involves multimedia.

Wikipedia defines multimedia thus:

Multimedia is the use of several different media (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video) to convey information. Multimedia also refers to the use of computer technology to create, store, and experience multimedia content. …
Multimedia can be broadly divided into 2 categories viz Linear and NON-Linear Multimedia. Linear multimedia start and continue till the end without any navigation control for the user. Whereas Non-Linear Multimedia offer interactivity to the end user.
As the information is presented in various formats, multimedia enhances user experience and makes it easier and faster to grasp information. Presenting information in various formats is nothing new, but multimedia generally implies presenting information in various digital formats.

For our purposes we might consider multimedia as any combination of text, images, sounds, animation and video delivered under the control of a computer. Although the more extensive examples of multimedia are delivered on media such as CD-ROMs, it will be convenient for our purposes to limit ourselves to multimedia that can be delivered across the Internet, generally in the context of World Wide Web (WWW) pages. The principles of design and development are the same but the quantity of data which can be conveniently delivered is considerably restricted.

Multimedia is interactive when it allows the user some control over the sequence in which content is delivered. Multimedia need not be interactive and on that basis television or a movie might qualify as multimedia in the sense that they combine images with audio and, perhaps additional media. Simple products which permit user control over forward and backward movement through a linear sequence of screens may meet the minimum criterion for being interactive. Hypermedia (probably the best known example is the World Wide Web) goes beyond linear sequences of screens and provides more complex interlinking of content. However, the nature of interactivity in multimedia is a topic of ongoing debate.

Activity 1.1

This activity will provide an opportunity to:

Demonstrate that you can create and publish a simple web site
Introduce yourself to the class
Share some examples of multimedia that can be found on the WWW
Begin to develop a basis for making judgments about the quality of multimedia on the WWW.