Non-linear Storytelling for Interactive Media

Original Lesson Plan

| list of learning resources | abstract |

Information design

• Presenting information with clarity
  • Viewers shouldn't get lost in the "hypermaze"
    • Use of roadmaps and overviews
  • Different media shouldn't cancel each other out
    • Humans have a limited "bandwidth"--thus an animation commented by scrolling text would be very hard to follow.
  • The various media should be used as appropriate
    • In an actual implementation, an information kiosk in a noisy post office sat unused because it relied entirely on synthesized speech without a visual counterpart.
  • Titles devoted to straight presentation of facts should not arbitrarily lock out users from any sections--the main value of interactivity is in allowing self--directed exploration.
    • Avoid "blind alleys"--users generally should be able to continue exploring without retracing their steps.
• Eliciting a response from the viewer
  • Make it clear what to do to get something to happen
    • Flashing buttons can guide the viewer through a default set of actions
    • Help on more complex options should be prominently available.
  • Allow for the "couch potato" inclination of most viewers
    • The system should be minimally useful also to those who flip through it in a linear manner.
    • Avoid static screen designs that will fail to capture the attention of casual users.
• Accounting fully for the user interaction
  • Avoid "dead" areas on the screen
  • If the user's action is inappropriate, notify and point to available help
• Providing a rich and satisfying experience
  • Unlike a linear piece of storytelling--with its predetermined beginning and end--an interactive multimedia piece may have several entry points and exits, and a possibly infinite number of routes between them. Traditional forms of narrative "closure" are generally inadequate for non-linear works.
  • Variety and quality of contents clash with time, storage, and complexity constraints. Most media (animation, sampled sounds) result in large volumes of data. This is compounded by "combinatorial explosion" within the work--the hundreds and thousands of outcomes that are mathematically possible.
    • Like the cut in filmmaking and the ellipsis in narrative, work out ways to suggest richness and complexity rather than incorporating it explicitly.
    • Provide default actions to handle those sequences of user responses which could not be anticipated by the author.