Experiencing stories through artifacts : an authoring model for tangible narratives

Abstract

This dissertation examines how physical artifacts can support the interactive process of engaging with a narrative and the motives, factors, and mechanisms that lead to its enjoyment. It surveys literature from the study of interactive storytelling and examines experimental research and creative work on interactive narratives, tangible interaction, pop-up books, and paper-based computing. It also considers principles brought from the study of play and games, social semiotics, as well as cognition and human behavior. The dissertation contributes a fully implemented design case, Letters to José, to the repository of interactive digital narratives and the limited body of works of tangible narratives. Letters to José is an interactive non-linear narrative inspired by the exchange of letters between two brothers: Jesús -a young medical student- and José -an air force recruit. The story describes the events in Jesús's life and depicts the changes in Colombian society in the late 1940s. In a physical/digital hybrid form, Letters to José is presented as three interactive, physically unfolding story worlds that combine unique paper mechanisms with different visual, performative, and auditory modes. This dissertation presents the authoring, development, and building of Letters to José, conducted through the Research through Design methodology. The design rationale is informed by a conceptual framework built to explore the triangular relationship between the ontological perspectives of the interactive narrative: the story, the system, and the presentation, and the way meaning is made in these specific perspectives. At the end of the research process, Letters to José is evaluated with a mixed-method study that looks at the participants' phenomenological experiences and understand the motives, factors, and mechanisms that led them to enjoy Letters to José. A multitude of findings is drawn from the creation of Letters to José, the conceptual framework, and the mixed-method study, which reveal critical design aspects and considerations for authoring tangibles narratives. These considerations are translated into a key outcome of this dissertation, an authoring model for tangible narratives. The authoring model considers the relationships between physical artifacts, their characteristics and functions in the narrative experience, and how the narrative structure affords the intervention of physical manipulation. Ultimately, this dissertation prescribes practices and considerations that can be used to analyze and study interactive narratives and support the authoring and design of tangible narratives.