Theory and Commentary
David J. Bodenhamer, “Narrating Space and Place.” In Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015) 7-27.
Janet H. Murray, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012.
- Introduction, Chaps. 1-3 (pp. 1-103)
Carrie Heeter, “Interactivity in the Context of Designed Experiences”. Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol. 1, No. 1., 2000.
Neil C. M. Brown, Timothy S. Barker, and Dennis Del Favero, “Performing Digital Aesthetics: The Framework for a Theory of the Formation of Interactive Narratives,” Leonardo 44, no. 3 (June 2011): 212–19.
“What Is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?,” The Interaction Design Foundation, April 2017.
Media
Interactive Fiction Resources
- Interactive Fiction Archive
- Interactive Fiction Database (wiki-style)
- KONGREGATE
iFiction – Resource with list of playable text adventure classics
- Classics (including Adventure, Dungeon (the original Zork), Eliza, Oregon Trail)
- All the Zorks from Infocom
Internet Archive
Tools
Twine – open source nonlinear, interactive authoring tool
Inklewriter – hosted nonlinear authoring tool
Phaser – game design framework
Unity – high-level, very challenging game design
Assignments
Project Proposal Due
1. How does the interactivity of media consumption, specifically television, change with the rise of streaming services that do not have a default program on the screen as happens in traditional cable television?
2. In translating a physical artifact to a digital space, does it lose meaning, gain meaning, or remain the same?
3. What elements of web design have changed as websites and applications have needed to incorporate a mobile feature?
1. For interactive works, do audiences also become creators?
2. How to balance the author’s expression and the audience’s experience when designing and displaying interactive works?
3. Do interactive activities must be ongoing or real-time? For example, is leaving a comment after viewing the work also a type of interaction?
1. How does the criticality of SF as a political medium translate into interactive media works?
2. CC Twine and Inklewriter; what does collaborative and interactive fiction signal about the future of SF writing?
3. Where does the politics of NFTs fall under digital interactivity?
What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular? Was a fun read. In part because it admitted the conceit about Design Thinking that so many don’t. People like it because it’s fun – and, while the results can be effective, the process is more ‘gamified’ than it is studious.
1. How does “empathy” help designers create products that people want to use?
2. What are the ‘assumptions’ it challenges?
3. When we say: “thinking outside the box” whose box is it we’re trapped in?
1) At what point does the interactor become the creator?
2) Agency is something that is required for the interactor to have desire in the design, but what happens, or what might happen in the interactor gains too much agency? Is there such a thing?
3) If Designers are always creating with the interactor in mind, at what point is the design still theirs? Are writers and artists also supposed to be in constant thought of what the interactor needs in order to feel agency over the work with which they are engaging?
1. Can TableTopRolePlayingGamess be works of art? Would we have to re-think authorship as the actors become playwrights? (waw that seems to be a recurring question, are we that obsessed with property and authorship?)
2. Are “technophobia” and “technophilia” concepts to be dismissed as irrational? Aren’t they what SF is all about?
3. How can interactivity be preserved in time?
1. How can we design an open-ended system that balances the level of entropy? (Something accessible and organized but still equipped to handle ambiguity)
2. Besides the form of the computer/ feel of the buttons/ function of the screen, etc, a digital interface will always be without the materiality of the physical world. How can this sensory experience truly be translated?
3. Why do we pull from a library of physical organizations/ categorizations when designing a digital interface? How does our sense of place affect are cognitive reasoning?
1. Is Interactivity the mainstream of future media development? Will literature lose its status and give way to games?
2. A Cultural Approach to Interaction mentions Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, which seems to be a study of industrial psychology brought about by cognitive psychology in the 1980s, and is outdated today. Yet we continue to emphasize even more the materiality and spatiality in cultural studies, such as the study of infrastructure, STS, etc. Does this mean that the turn of the humanities and social sciences toward anthropology is inevitable, or even the only path of advancement? And what kind of cultural perspective should we adopt to consider today’s design of everyday things?
3. Is there an intrinsic connection between sci-fi and interaction thinking? For example, its spatiality? And it is more common to study the narrative space of sci-fi novels instead of short stories, but is there any fundamental difference between them as well as their studies?
1. What does interactivity look like in the art space? With the rise of NFTs and digital art, can art truly be curated the way it once was?
2. Can design thinking really utilize empathy if the product’s end result might be detrimental for its user?
3. More and more digital advertisements are becoming interactive (i.e. interactive game ads). Where does one draw the line between interactivity and interactive exploitation?
1. Does design thinking imply altruistic goals? Considering that the first step is empathy and to empathize is to share the feelings of another. We all wish the best for ourselves and if we are to truly empathize and share feelings with another, by the transitive property, wouldn’t we want the best for them too? How could design thinking then change the consumer space? Is this asking too much of design thinking?
2. Is there space for non-interactive texts in a modern world? Do all media consumers want control over the narrative of their media?
3. Does the futuristic nature of Sci-Fi lend itself to the digital, non-linear space?
1. Is interactive SF the only way the creator and viewer can both physically become a part of SF?
2. How did interactivity come to evolve in its present form? Are humans more comfortable with digital/virtual interactivity than physical, real-life interactivity? Who set the standard that interactivity is superior?
3. Wasn’t design always supposed to be empathetic?