The 4C framework: Principles ofinteraction in digitalecosystems

Recent years have seen an increased research interest in multi-device interactions and digital ecosystems. This research addresses new opportunities and challenges when users are not simply interacting with one system or device at a time, but orchestrate ensembles of them as a larger whole. One of these challenges is to understand what principles of interaction work well for what, and to create such knowledge in a form that can inform design. Our contribution to this research is a framework of interaction principles for digital ecosystems, which can be used to analyze and understand existing systems and design new ones. The 4C framework provides new insights over existing frameworks and theory by focusing specifically on explaining the interactions taking place within digital ecosystems. We demonstrate this value through two examples of the framework in use, firstly for understanding an existing digital ecosystem, and secondly for generating ideas and discussion when designing a new one.