Michael makes a great point in his comment here: thinking of “rich” as basically a synonym for “enhanced marketing” feels like a very limited definition of the idea. Ujay suggests on his blog that we “re-imagine the design as a speech to the user, convincing the user this product is best for meeting specific goals…” I do think that this rhetorical approach to certain interactions is appropriate, but truly “rich” online experiences do not do this. Who wants to “make speeches to users” anymore?

There are some truly rich experiences on the web that are totally different from the ones listed above. I’m thinking of alternate-reality games like those that sprang up around List (http://www.thelostexperience.com/) or the new Nine Inch Nails album (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(alternate_reality_game) ), or World Without Oil (http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/default.aspx).

Those experiences are *actually* rich and fit Ujay’s definition above really well: they appeal to reason and emotion, they involve mental effort, real human interaction, and (gasp!) offline activities. But the technology and design around these experiences are about as Web 1.0 as you can imagine, basic HTML, email lists, maybe some phone calls. Often the design around them is ugly and clunky. They rarely if ever include what Adobe/Macromedia has tried to claim as “rich media”: a lot of snazzy drop-down menus and drag-and-drop. “Rich” doesn’t mean being compelled to click on a zooming, fading UI widget.

As the internet moves towards complete ubiquity in both connectivity and data transfer rates we’ll see traditional client-side applications being delivered over the web-as-a-platform rather than the “rich” experience being limited to the desktop.

What Web 2.0 does for RIAs is that it makes it no longer necessary to present workflows in a structure that conforms to paging through a document, a metaphor on which the web was predicated but which makes little sense for the workflows in major applications. We’re now more free to create a traditional client-side structure and experience using the browser as a platform rather than an application with which to access an application. We’re not 100% there yet, but it’s much closer than it’s ever been.

In rhetoric, ethos has a diachronic dimension, and encompasses past history (reputation) typicality of behaviour and future intent. This contributes to a sense of “character” in the speaker which leads directly to their credibility with their audience. In modern communications terms, you might associate this with brand, although brand doesn’t fully encompass this.

I have used this framework to look at knowledge management approaches (logos maps to information management; pathos maps to collaboration and social interaction; ethos maps to identity, vision and culture). See my book Organising Knowledge for more (www.organisingknowledge.com). Looking at both synchronic and diachronic needs lead me to add the element of “sophos” – wisdom, which reflects the function of learning and building experience over time. In your terms, wouldn’t that map to the “legacy” of the experience in your visitors’ minds – ie richness as a contribution that they take away with them?

See: http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/ for a definition and links to a dictionary.

- Indeed, there’s more to rich experience than simply websites and I hope this article provokes substantive discussion beyond the mundane. Immersive massively multiplayer games, cross-media promo campaigns, “reality games”, and the like are great examples to highlight. Perhaps someone could volunteer to map out a continuum of richness, where such examples would reside at the far end…

- Please don’t get hung up on design as a “speech”, rather consider that every designed product/service/experience is an act of human communication of some kind to varying degrees of persuasiveness and engagement…and thus prompting a human response.

- Thanks for the pointer about “sophos”–very intriguing!

- In the course of rapid editing, some shortcuts had to be taken…so in my extremely terse “definitions” of the rhetorical elements I may have been a bit misleading. Note that much of my understanding of rhetoric as a mode of design thinking comes from the writings of Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin (Design Discourse, Discovering Design, and The Idea of Design). So I should have stated that Pathos (as a rhetorical element of design) is the emotional, cognitive, behavioral affect upon users, while Ethos is the tone of voice of the designer typically expressed as presentational style, thus conveying the character and credibility of the designer (ie, speaker). Ultimately, this rhetorical balance is about the central task of the designer: to envision and create products appropriate for human situations of use, drawing upon whatever knowledge is needed to get the job done.

Please keep the comments coming! Thanks again for your feedback!

Does anyone remember when all clients wanted ‘sexy’ design? Makes me shudder. Seems to me we’re at a similar place with all this ‘rich’ stuff. ‘Rich’ seems like a way of expressing the layers within something, but not the layers themselves. For example, you can describe a seam of gold as being rich, but it doesn’t describe the gold itself, or the potential of it to produce beautiful artifacts.

Maybe it would be better to use the term ‘smart’ instead?

Chocolate, Kings and Impressionist Paintings are rich
Cars, cameras and expert friends are smart
Rich things are emotional and sensory.
Smart things are clever and useful.

Web interfaces are still in their infancy and personally, I don’t believe they are quite ready to define or deliver genuine richness to the masses. This mustn’t stop us trying to build richer environments, but let’s just aim to be a little smarter about how we go about it.