MA 2008 / A brother's murder/ Non-linear narrative project
'Explore Kafka's short story on your mobile phone.'
After several lectures on the theory of interactive and non-linear narratives we had to create our own interactive narrative based on F.Kafka's short-story 'A brother's murder'. Each group would have to deconstruct the story and decide on how to transform it into an engaging narrative. Eventually the story would have to be embedded into a website or mobile application.
Prior to this project we were taught how to work with Flash Lite, therefore my group chose to create the narrative for a mobile game. Additionally we decided
to use playdoh figures instead of student actors, meaning we would make stop-frame animations to narrate Kafka's murder story.
Interactive Storyboard
While figuring out how we wanted the user to engage with the story we decided to incorporate a map where the user could swap characters and locations at certain times. Thus enabling the user to go back in time at any point and explore every event thoroughly. Having decided on this I created the interactive storyboard.
The diagram describes what actions users can take to explore the story. They pick a character and can either choose to watch a video sequence from that character's perspective or look into extras e.g. crime evidence. After viewing the short video clip the user can decide to stay in that timeframe or move on with the story.
Paper prototyping
Our usability tests turned out to be quite effective. On one hand it was a bit strange to work with paper to show users what our ‘interactive’ product would look like, but on the other hand it helped us realize the flaws of our navigation. After every single test we would make the changes to see their immediate effect during the next test. As the term “interactive narrative” suggests users are indispensable for such an experience. Throughout the entire design process it is necessary to think of the needs and wants of the users.
