interaction

Interaction describes the mutual relationship of people with each other, people with technology, or computers with computers. An interaction is the reaction to a change that requires a mutual exchange of information. In communication technology, interactive is understood to mean that a dialogue takes place between participants, i.e., an interaction, and not just an exchange of data and files.

With the interaction the participants are not passive and follow a given and not changeable program sequence, but intervene themselves actively into the organization, treatment and manipulation of a process. Interaction is crucial in many programs, in video games, and in electronic instructional material.

The form of interaction is completely different: it can be a mouse click or keystroke, it can be a mouse movement of a cursor or a touch input on a touch screen, a finger movement with a data glove or by gesture recognition. The interaction performed is transmitted by the interactive entity - the user or a computer - to the executing entity - the computer - which includes it in the representation.

Without interactions, texts cannot be written, graphics cannot be created, motion sequences cannot be calculated, or videos cannot be played. They occur everywhere: in application programs, teleservices, web services, online services and in many other application areas. In the consumer-oriented telecommunications and online services, the e-services, there are many services equipped with interaction, such as online banking, e-learning, e-vote, e-commerce or video-on-demand, but also pure distribution services. Other interactive services are monitoring services where the user is only granted access if he has authorized himself, as in fingerprint recognition or iris recognition. In addition, computer or video games can only be run with interaction.