To be honest, I both love and disagree with the term RIA. I love it because it’s now such a part of the common vernacular of web culture that when it’s used everyone immediately understands that you are talking about “something better than primitive html websites.” I disagree with it, because A) like all things techy, it’s already obsolete and 2) it’s limiting.
Its limiting factor has to do with the two words “internet” and “application.” Here is what I mean. With Adobe AIR, it is possible to use the same technologies and apply the same experience design principles to a deskop application, instead of an internet application. To think of this another way, ask yourself whether an RIA ceases to be one when it is packaged with AIR and installed as a desktop application? Is it now a RDA, a Rich Desktop Application?
And my problem with the term “application” stems from the fact that software applications have a history of form and function which leads to pre-determined ideas. As a result, when I say “application” there’s a good chance you think “Outlook” or “Mail” or “Photoshop” or even “Twitter.” This is a limiting conversation for you, me, and our ideas for the future.
So instead I prefer to use the acronym RIE, which means Rich Interactive Experience. “Interactive” works well because it connotes the idea of the user, which should be the focus of the object created. And “experience” is broad enough to not conceptually limit the form of the object created. An “experience” can be immersive like World of Warcraft, or data rich like News Map, or social like Facebook, or production-oriented like Scribbles, or organizational like the iPhone. Furthermore, and this is perhaps a somewhat selfish reflection, I describe my work interchangeably as Interaction Design and Experience Design, so RIE describes what I do. 
Perhaps I’m too semantically sensitive, but it’s time for a new buzz-acronym. For me, it’s RIE. This is not to say that RIA will leave my vocabulary. As long as it has an appropriate context of use, it most certainly won’t. However, the next generation is not a rich internet application, it is a rich interactive experience.
Ethan, I probably couldn’t agree more with you! I’ve been using the RIE term for about a year now and as u said RIA gets short in a lot of trends the developer and technology community is falling on nowadays.
With the revamp of rich User Experiences all round, just interconnected systems are just not enough. We need to move our view forward to what the real future will be and were people like you guys with Thermo, Flash, Flex and AIR, and the Microsoft people with techs like Blend, Silveright and WPF, will set the bar for better, richer and empowered experiences for the user.
Here is my original post on the matter.
http://samiqbits.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-world-was-one.html
Cheers.
G.
Comment by Samiq — February 2, 2008 @ 9:00 am
It was great reading your post, Samiq. Good to hear that our thoughts are heading in the same direction.
E
Comment by Ethan Eismann — February 2, 2008 @ 9:27 am
RIE is nice, but I like it more Rich Internet Experience if we talk about the web
because these days web with flash definitly is heading out in front of desktop experiences which are still very flat, except the games
Rich part conotates Interactivity at its best, so double words not needed
that’s my thinking, also soon I would like to see using RDE for desktop or similar
Comment by MrSteel — February 2, 2008 @ 10:10 am
When I first heard the term RIA it held no meaning to it. Now I’ve attached it to business related Flex apps online.
I like the term interactive and I like the use of “experience”. To be fair, at almost every meeting I’ve heard an Adobe representative speak at, they describe the RIA as a vehicle to deliver an a rich experience.
The term “Rich” is still meaningless to me. So far it has meant transitions and some often nice graphic effects (think photoshop filters). I think if we use the term “Rich” now this will also become dated with time.
In the console world, software was married with hardware and each game created the experience (rich or not). So what I’m trying to say is that a certain level of graphic expression was to be expected or could be achieved in Playstation One for example. When Playstation 2 was introduced you were able to do more technically and graphically. With Playstation 3 the graphic and computational allows for even more along with increased network play. So when you talk about Call of Duty, the sound images and game play come to mind but that by itself is still a broad description. If you say Call of Duty 4 for Playstation 3 or XBox 360 you get a better idea of what to expect or what you are working with.
All this to say the term RIA is describing the availability of better and more advanced hardware and features. An “app” can still be crapp. Still can be “poor” and still can be “non interactive”. I think it would be better to start saying, “Buzzword 2 for Flash Player 10″ or “Buzzword 2 for Adobe AIR 2″ or “Lemmings 3 on Flash Playstation 3″.
If you still want to go with acronyms I would do something like,
Interactive Software Experience (ISE)
Interactive Designer Experience (IDE)
Designers Interactive Experience (DIE)
Designers Software Experience (DSE)
Designers Experience (DE)
Designed Experience
Flash designers could say their site is a DSE for Flash Player 10.
I think that there are authors, developers and creators out there that are designers and artists. Once the technology and the tools are “out of the way” or become subject to us we will see all sorts of unique creations. Like a painter with a canvas or an artist with a pencil and paper. As it is I think we are still subject to the limitations of our tools. We want to create what we want to create and be able to tell it what to do and have it do it (at least that’s my vision). Drumbeat 2000’s “Contract” system was so close. In plain english you could tell your program what a button is supposed to do. “When [button1] is [clicked] goto [http://google.com]”. Underneath this dynamic description was the underlying dynamic code. I made over 250 scripts and enhancements to this system and could “code” in a matter of minutes. And, you didn’t need to be a coder to understand this system. I’ve seen behaviors and that sort of got it right but not really. I could go on about this but I can tell I’ve been rambling…
BTW, I wrote a design document back in the day for a project I was working on oddly enough also called “AIR”. It stood for Anaphoric Information Representation. Its name was derived from creating simple and symbolic representations for object oriented programming and instruction. It was sort of an extension of the Drumbeat 2000 Contract system (basically a way to simplify the language instructions so that any person could understand what is going on while also providing advanced programmers the ability to code under the hood). In fact that project was the reason I created the Flash drag and drop components.
http://drumbeatinsight.com/projects/air.html (i haven’t ever publicly gave out this link before).
Of course, its outdated and needs to be even simpler.
Comment by judah — February 2, 2008 @ 10:31 am
BTW The project I mention has been in limbo since Flex came out.
Comment by judah — February 2, 2008 @ 10:40 am
[…] will have to chime in here on Ethan’s post about using the acronym RIE instead of RIA. Ethan’s insight is spot on, but why […]
Pingback by graviti - human.centered.design » Blog Archive » Experiences, not RIE or RIA — February 2, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Reminds me of this cartoon…
http://www.nectarine.com.au/nectarineblog/index.php?/archives/14-Barely-Out-Of-Beta-comic-strip.html
Want to buy an argument?
For the record I think RIE is a better fit than RIA, now that applications can be a mashups browser apps, desktop apps, widgets and mobile apps.
The only issue I might have with the words “interactive experience” is that this is what Flash apps used to be called before actionscript got some programming muscle behind it — so there is still a perception that anything “interactive” or “experiential” is a design-y or a heavily branded experience restricted to the domain of ad agencies, without much data enablement muscle behind it. So in adopting the term RIE, you’ve got to overcome a certain preconception that “experiential” apps can’t also be “business” or “serious” apps. But I think that preconception is eroding gradually, and the industry might soon be ready for this more common-sense acronym for the “stuff we build”.
Comment by Joeflash — February 5, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
[…] Eismann has an interesting rumination about the limitations of language when it comes to new technology. More specifically, he’s […]
Pingback by Sean Voisen » I think it’s a ploy to keep Merriam-Webster in business — February 9, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
hehe bold steps Ethan, but glad to see others question the term RIA. I got slammed on this topic (mainly because i’m Microsoft ..oooh the borg…) and swore i’d never revisit it (the guy in the glasses in the comic link above is me).
That being said, i’d be curious to see what your thoughts are on in terms of taxonomy of R*A and how you would break them down.
We’ve formulated our own internally (which I dare not share for fear of villagers with pitch forks forming at my gates) and have found it pretty close to being spot on so far.
-
Scott / Microsoft.
Comment by Scott Barnes — November 24, 2008 @ 9:19 pm
@Scott
Not sure what you mean by taxonomy of R*A. Do you refer to a classification of the different types of experience people might lump into the category “R*A?”
Comment by Ethan Eismann — November 27, 2008 @ 7:40 pm