Designing the digital tale

By Editor on June 9, 2009 8:26 am

Narrative development is the key concern for readers, and should drive all design decisions, whether of visual or multimedia effects, screen layout, availability of menus, placement of links on text, or use of images as hotspots. Dr James Pope concludes his two-part series on digital storytelling.

IN THE FIRST part of this series, I looked at the particular joys and pains of reading/interacting with a form of storytelling that has still to find its feet, and find an audience beyond academia. My research with 36 readers highlighted several key aspects of interactive fiction, which I believe can be addressed by writers in order to offer readers a truly interactive experience.In the sections below I outline what writers should be thinking about when they compose their narratives, and what they should build into the design of the all-important interface. After all, the interface is the ‘site’ where the story is accessed, and too much current material neglects interface design to the detriment of the reading experience.

Use web design conventions for interactivity

Aarseth’s (1997) concept of non-trivial effort seems highly significant here, especially when that effort interrupts absorption (Nell 1988) in the narrative. In hypertext, reading and narrative expectations clash with interface expectations, setting up awkwardness, uncertainty, unwelcome effort, and ultimately some reported high levels of frustration and negativity.Thus, in the case of afternoon, a story, LOveOne, and These Waves of Girls the readers in my study were all trying to reconcile their expectations of narrative and reading behaviours, with their expectations of usability for a screen-based medium; essentially they were looking for a reading activity and simultaneously a web-style interactivity. The two behaviours rarely lived comfortably together. Where the interface design was more overtly visual and web-like, there were fewer reported difficulties with interactivity itself.All of this is not to suggest that writers cannot experiment with design and/or narrative form, but they must be aware that hypertext, in its newness and unfamiliarity to the great majority of readers, places heavy demands on a reader’s attention already, without unnecessary work being added by sloppy design.

Ensure interactivity does not impede reading absorption

Campbell (2003) has argued that a risk for writers of interactive fiction is that the pleasures or other distractions of an interface may detract from the act of reading. Some readers in the study did indeed say that there can be too much happening on a screen, so that reading becomes pushed back to a secondary activity, simply because there are so many interactive features to ‘check out’.The data showed how some readers slipped into a kind of play mode either because the story was hard to find because of poor interface design (eg afternoon, These Waves of Girls, LOveOne) or because the interface was very busy (eg The Virtual Disappearence of Miriam, Amelie), or difficult to use (Of Day, Of Night). Some readers reported that they were distracted from reading by playing with the interface to see what it would do, because they actually enjoyed that activity, as in the case of Amelie. If we wish readers of hypertext fictions to be audiences rather than game-players, the data in this study suggest that authors must strive to achieve a balance between an interface that is visually and operationally appealing, and a reading experience that is absorbing.
 

Offer adequate control of interactive elements

Although advocates of hypertext narrative (Bolter 2001, Jackson 1997, Landow 1997, for example) have enthusiastically argued that interactivity offers the reader more creative input, the difficult balance between the positive rewards of creative control and the negative effects of unwanted effort, is an aspect barely discussed in the literature, though Murray (1997) and Ryan (2006) acknowledge the issue.The data strongly supports Murray’s (1997) contention that authorial control and reader agency must be carefully balanced. What appeared to be happening for the readers in my study is that the presence of interactivity promised something that hypertext in its current form could not deliver — ie, a game-like level of user control combined with a novel-like level of audience subordination to authorial leadership. The two experiences seemed to clash destructively in many readers’ minds.The readers who commented on this issue all talked about the need for control to be given such that it progressed the narrative at all times. Whether that control is the offer of hyper-linked words, or animated images, whatever the reader does to the screen should develop the story.

For example, the video clips in Of Day, Of Night would be considered inappropriate, despite the fact that they clearly were part of the narrative, because they could not be controlled easily and quickly.The point here is that an element of control has been offered in order for the reader to access the video and watch it, but inadequate control has been offered in order for the reader to stop or maybe rewind the video.The data also suggests that there is an optimum amount of choice to be given if the narrative experience is to be maintained. In These Waves of Girls, for example, too many links on text simply led to choice overload and the perception in my reader-participants that there was no story at all. The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam and Of Day, Of Night seemed to be reaching a satisfactory balance: both of those pieces only offered choices that took the reader to consequential and sequentially logical parts of the narrative.Narrative development is the key concern for readers, and should drive all design decisions, whether of visual or multimedia effects, screen layout, availability of menus, placement of links on text, or use of images as hotspots.

Ensure reader can discern between ‘navigational links’ and ‘storytelling links’

Links are, as some writers (eg Calvi 1999, Landow 2004, Kendall and Réty 2000) have argued, highly significant in the telling of the story, and so to discuss the design and functionality of links is also to discuss their role and effectiveness in allowing the reader to ‘navigate’ the plot. The data show that links need to take readers to places in the narrative that makes sense to them, in terms of an unfolding story. Readers are mostly searching for the story when they choose which links to follow, and writers should design linking structures with that specific desire in mind.In an information-seeking activity, a reader will look for alternative links until the desired information has been found — the desire to find out is the driver; but in the reading of hypertextual fiction, the motivation to keep reading has to be generated by what each link delivers when it is followed. The desired ‘information’ is the unfolding narrative and if that does not emerge as each link is chosen, then the desire to ‘find out’ is killed off.

Ensure effective free movement, including backtracking

Clear and easily accessed backtracking is required: the reader needs to be able to go back in step-by-step order (a trail), and out of order (using a map for example) to anywhere in the narrative that they have so far experienced. The analogues to this are obvious: with a print book, the reader can easily go to any page forward or backward; and of course in the case of a book, spatial orientation and narrative orientation are the same thing, assuming the reader reads the book in page-numerical order. In the hypertext environment, where habits from reading now must co-exist with habits from browsing, a backtrack facility should offer a reading trail and a map, both easily accessed.Nielsen (1990) talks about free movement being appropriate to need. In a narrative context the need is to achieve a familiarity with the fictional world, to gain sympathy or antipathy with characters, to build a consistency of apprehension of the concepts and events of the fictional world. Effective free movement (including backtracking) in hypertext therefore would ideally enable the reader to go anywhere they wanted in the site, but more importantly, to go wherever they want to in the narrative.

Site location is not necessarily the same as narrative location

The extra facility (demand) of interactivity and the intangibility of the virtual book-space change this equation, so well-established in print, between ‘site’ location and narrative location. In hypertext, site orientation and narrative orientation must be considered as a unity in the design of the navigation system.A navigation system in an information-giving website need not concern itself with this correlation because the user creates his or her own ‘narrative’ as they search for information. In the case of fiction however, there is, certainly for the readers in my study, still the assumption and desire for an author-created narrative, delivering the underlying story, which the reader will eventually be able to discern. The readers in this study all wanted the author’s design to eventually be accessible, since that is what they see as a core pleasure.So, navigation tools must allow the reader to know were he is in the site (the book) and in the narrative, and these two orientations in turn allow the reader to apprehend the story. If one or both of these orientations is hard to gain, or conversely, easy to lose, the reader’s sense of story is also disrupted.Navigation tools need to provide both linear movement and non-linear movement, and provide a total command of the space, combined with a continual ‘update’ of the narrative context.

The most positive, though not perfect, exemplar for this requirement would be The Virtual Disappearance Of Miriam, which combines a relatively straightforward and linear plot, with web-familiar navigation, including clear book-like chapter menus, and a simple ‘back to home’ link. These features enabled readers to trace their path through the story and around the whole site without becoming lost in the negative sense: this in turn enhanced the experience of becoming lost in the positive sense.Good navigation design can provide security of place; good narrative design, facilitated by good navigation design, can create imaginative security. Several critics talk about this possibility as something for a somewhat distant future (Murray 1997, Douglas and Hargadon 2001, Miall 2003), but the data here suggest it is possible now, given an understanding of the reading experience.

An overview menu should be available at any point in the reader’s ‘journey’

Several comments were made by readers to the effect that they would like to know not only where they are in the context of the site and the story, but that they would like to know the size of the reading commitment. Overview options of various kinds could offer this.For example, in the case of 253 there was an overview site-map, and accordingly this piece was seen as relatively easy to move around. Of Day, Of Night actually relied on the reader returning regularly to the homepage map (because otherwise the narrative did not progress), and readers here were aware of how much there was to see.A further aspect of overview raised by the data is that some visual representation of how much has been read of the whole is needed by readers. The only example this researcher has so far found of hypertext with an always-available home page, and a progressive bookmark is The Mobius Case, an unpublished Master’s project by Rutger Van Dijk (2005) at Bournemouth University. It shows, as a permanent feature of the screen layout, which sections of the piece have been read, and which have yet to be read.

Conclusion

Whilst the intensity of debate around the joys and pains of hypertext fiction appears to have subsided somewhat, the continued availability of interactive fiction online suggest that it is a form not likely to disappear anytime soon. It is hoped that the ideas outlined above will give writers useful ‘tools’ for the creation of interactive fictions that will appeal to readers; it is believed furthermore that theorists and critics may understand the nature of hypertext fiction better by allowing their analyses to include knowledge and understandings from the previously not-connected disciplines used in the study reported here. Literary theory, reader-response research, multi-media design practice, and human-computer interface usability studies are all highly relevant in the understanding and creation of hypertext fiction, and as Murray (1997 p274) has already said, the writer of fiction in the era of interactive media is now ‘half hacker, half bard’.

Concluded. Read Part 1, Twists in the digital tale 

Dr James Pope teaches at the Media School, Bournemouth University, England. He can be reached at jpope@bournemouth.ac.uk

Bibliography

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Categories: Article  Tags: digital, narrative, non-linear fiction, story