After completing a moodboard of ideas for my immersive prototype of the Apollo space program, I wanted to do some research on how storytelling can impact my design thinking with this project especially.
In this video, designer/screenwriter Cindy Chastain delivers a session that explores how an understanding of narrative techniques can make us better designers.
Cindy Chastain begins the talk by explaining how ‘storytelling’ is a nebulous term when it comes to interactive design. It can be seen as a weasel word – words that are added to make a statement sound more legitimate and impressive but are somewhat meaningless.
However, storytelling can have a use in interactive design work as a communication tool or framework. Communication tools include things such as user stories, personas, scenarios and storyboards. Framework includes things such as brand stories and product stories – stories that are told to describe how something works, how it fits into someones lives as a framework for design.
Storytelling can also have a use in providing the user’s narrative. Research in cognitive science has shown a stream in self-talk occurs when a user interacts with a design product – ranging from two different types of design narrative:
- Narrative of use – the product’s features
- Personal storytelling – where the user narrates what the product means, how it fits in their life, how it’s going to work
But how can we as designers provide cues that will deepen that narrative connection?
What interaction design and storytelling have in common is a desire for engagement – cognitive and emotional engagement.
So what can we learn from the discipline of storytelling that will help us design for more meaningful and engaging product experiences?
Chastain shows a clip from ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly'(1996) to demonstrate how this could be done.
Slow disclosure is a specific form of screenwriting technique employed at the beginning of this film. The director builds tension and suspense and leads the audience to expect a confrontation between a couple of cowboy characters until the film then suprises the audiences when these cowboys enter the building to ambush someone else. The audience realises these characters are not enemies at all – like they had expected from the suspensful direction of the scene, but actually allies working together.
This use of slow disclosure to engage the audience I found to be quite interesting because of how effective it can be. It made me start to think on how I could implement a similar technique within my own immersive prototype to grab the user’s attention immediately. Perhaps the landing page could set up similar expectations only to subvert them as the user scrolls down the page. Perhaps if my landing page opens with a similar slow revelation of information and prompts the curiosity of the user, then builds to a crescendo with an unexpected twist – they will be onboard for the rest of the narrative.
Stories engage the audience because of the way they’re designed.
Theory – there are 2 types of storytelling. Narrative/telling stories used in things like user stories. And dramatic/showing stories used in user scenarios or storyboards.
In interactive products, the user can be seen as a character themselves who can initiate or perform actions based on an unfolding series of events. In other words, a user is an agent in a collaborative story environment such as a taskflow.
Like in a story narrative arc of a film, the beginning stage of a user journey features the user entering the interactive environment such as a website or app. Based on the possibilites based on that environment given to the user (like exposition in a film) the character (or user) then makes a decision. Based on that decision – the system gives a response, which leads the user to make another decision and so on, until there is a conclusion to this user journey/story.
In my own prototype, I need to ensure the user is integral in driving the narrative as they scroll down the page, and so animations and parallax scrolling elements will be essential for this type of interaction.
Chastain then talks about constructivist theory – explaining how we conceive and comprehend narrative. This is broken down into 3 parts.
- Perceptual capacity – what the audience is physicially capable of doing – what they see or hear
- Prior knowledge – the audience’s experiences and what they bring to a story – assumptions based on what the user knows or has read about. The audience builds expectations based on these assumptions.
- The structure of the story – the pattern, sequence of events and technique used to tell the story
Plot drives narrative structure and engagement. What, why and where it happens.
There are three types of cues that designers can use in their work, in a user’s experience with a plot:
- Communicate potential – communicate as a designer what the world is, the possibilites, the character’s actions and how it may lead to dramatic potential further on
- Reinforcing probability – making assumptions based on what’s happened before and making expectations on what happens next
- Facilitate completion – the satisfaction and pleasure in a good ending