Ontology: User Engagement (Part 2)

User engagement with a transmedia narrative emerges from or is affected by a) level of user engagement, b) user agency, c) human-centered design factors, and d) user participation on multiple levels. This post is the second of two parts that look at the elements that influence user engagement and the interrelationships between these elements.

• User Participation: A number of factors affect user participation in a transmedia narrative:
• Cognitive Participation: The degree of cognitive participation (mental processing) falls on a spectrum from passive participation on the low end to active participation on the high end (Screven, 2000, pp. 166-167). This spectrum of participation is closely related to user attention, which can range from “mindless” (casual and unsystematic) to “mindful” (focused and active) (Screven, 2000, pp. 166-167).
• Affective Participation: The emotional impact (affective participation) is one of the most important qualities of narratives. Transmedia narratives with high affective participation will have a high level of user engagement.
• Social Participation: The level of social participation can range from individual to shared activities.
• Temporal Participation: A narrative’s temporal participation can range from time-agnostic (the user can participate at any time) to time-dependent (the user must participate at a specific time).
• Spatial Participation: A narrative’s spatial participation can range from location-agnostic (it doesn’t matter where the user is while participating) to location-dependent (a specific location is important to understanding the meaning of the narrative).
• Sensory Participation: A narrative’s use of the five senses – sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell – is the basis of sensory participation.
• Information Field: The information field consists of all of the information within the user’s immediate environment, not just the information the transmedia narrative itself presents. The information field can contain three types of messages:
• Intended Messages: The intended messages are the knowledge, concepts, and feelings that the transmedia narrative designer intends to communicate to the user.
• Unintended Messages: The unintended messages are caused by either irrelevant information (e.g. people, ambient sounds, visual distractions, etc.) or messages that come from the juxtaposition of pieces of information that create new and unintended messages.
• Perceived Messages: The perceived messages are those that the user extracts from the transmedia narrative. Perceived messages may or may not be the same messages the designer of the transmedia narrative intended to communicate. The perceived messages could be the result of unintended messages overwhelming the intended messages or intended messages that are interpreted in a way the designer did not intend.
• Human Centered Design: Transmedia narrative systems created using a human centered design approach are characterized by (Cooley, 2000):
• Coherence: A transmedia narrative that exhibits coherence ensures that the meaning of information embedded in it, even if it is not immediately evident, is not cloaked or obscured. Coherence includes the concept of transparency.
• Inclusiveness: An inclusive system welcomes users in and makes them feel like they are a part of a community of familiar and friendly activities.
• Malleability: A system with a high level of malleability can mold itself to suit the users, allowing them to modify the environment to suit their individual aesthetics, skills, and needs.
• Engagement: A system creates a sense of engagement by inviting users to participate in the process and creating a feeling of empathy.
• Ownership: A system can encourage the user’s sense of ownership by creating in the users a sense of belonging and enabling users to create something themselves with the storyworld of the narrative.
• Responsiveness: The responsiveness of a system – how it responds to the user’s individual needs, wants, and ways of doing things – can be enhanced by making the system’s own rules visible and then encouraging users to learn and change them.
• Purpose: The system should be able to respond to the purpose users have in mind and encourage them to go beyond it.
• Panoramic: A panoramic system provides “windows” or “apertures” through which a user can take a wider or more panoramic view of what is happening both inside and outside of the narrative. This panoramic perspective encourages the acquisition of “boundary knowledge” and allows users to act more effectively and competently by providing them with an understanding of the wider context of the narrative.
• Transcendent: A system that is transcendent encourages, entices, or provokes users to transcend the immediate requirements of the narrative and gain a broader understanding of the narrative’s meaning.

Ontology: User Engagement (Part 1)

User engagement with a transmedia narrative emerges from or is affected by a) level of user engagement, b) user agency, c) human-centered design factors, and d) user participation on multiple levels. This post is the first of two parts that look at the elements that influence user engagement and the interrelationships between these elements.

User engagement invites users to participate in the narrative and gains their interest and support. It consists of:

• Level of User Engagement: The degree of user engagement can span a spectrum from low to high engagement. One measure of user engagement is (Pratten, Audience Engagement & Content Strategy for Transmedia Storytellers, 2010):
• Attention: At the attention level, the user reads or watches content from the transmedia narrative but takes no further action. This is the lowest level of user engagement. At this point, the user is aware of the narrative but has not made a commitment to continued engagement with it.
• Evaluation: At the evaluation level the user’s engagement has increased and there is a definite interest in the transmedia narrative. At this stage, the user is deciding whether to make a commitment to continue engaging with the transmedia narrative, including using resources (e.g. time, money, effort) to further that engagement.
• Affection: At the affection level the user has made a commitment to spend time, money, effort, and other resources to continue engaging with the transmedia narrative. Engagement includes commenting, writing reviews, joining a community (but maybe only lurking), and posting Facebook and other “likes”.
• Advocacy: At the advocacy level the user’s commitment to the transmedia narrative goes beyond individual participation, with the user encourages others to engage with the narrative through online forwards of information, embedding content, and in satisfaction polls and questionnaires.
• Contribution: At the contribution level the user’s engagement includes making contributions to the narrative’s fan forums, events, and other activities or adding to the narrative’s storyworld through remixes, collaborations, or creation of entirely new stories. This is the highest level of engagement and involves a significant level of commitment by a user.
• User Agency: The amount of user control over the narrative is determined by the degree of user agency. The greater the ability of users to set goals, plan their attainment, and be rewarded with changes in the narrative environment, the greater the degree of user agency. Agency relationship, agency scope, agency immediacy, agency duration, dynamic agency, and user input direction are properties of user agency. User agency is also dependent on the user story role.
• User Story Role: In the internal mode, the user is projected into the story either through an avatar or in a first person perspective to play a role in the narrative. In external mode the user is situated outside the narrative (Ryan, 2001).
• Agency Relationship: The degree of agency relationship is determined by how tightly the user and narrative system actions are linked. This can range from no linkage to being tightly linked. If the agency relationship is low, an action by a user will not cause a response by the system, while a tightly linked agency relationship means that a user action will cause an appropriate and proportional response by the system (Harrell & Zhu, 2009).
• Agency Scope: The degree of agency scope is determined by the impact of a user action on the narrative world. The impact can range from local (i.e. navigating an avatar) to global (i.e. taking an action that determines the direction the narrative takes) (Harrell & Zhu, 2009).
• Agency Immediacy: The degree of agency immediacy is determined by how quickly a response to a user action occurs. This can range from an immediate response to a response that occurs after a considerable delay.
• Agency Duration: The degree of agency duration is determined by how long the impact of a user action lasts. This can range from short-term (e.g. killing a character that is regenerated a few seconds later) to permanent (e.g. permanently eliminating a key character) within the narrative or storyworld.
• Dynamic Agency: The degree of dynamic agency is determined by whether the agency relationship, scope, immediacy, or duration changes as the user progresses through the narrative.
• User Input Direction: The degree of user input direction is determined by how much control the user has over the narrative’s dynamic agency (Harrell & Zhu, 2009).

Transmedia Digest Blog

I am in the process of transitioning from Blogspot to Wordpress for my Transmedia Digest blog. While Blogspot is a good basic blogging platform, it does not provide the flexibility I would like as I move forward with blogging about transmedia narratives.

A duplicate of the content on this blog also appears on my blog at www.transmediadigest.com and I will be running both blogs in parallel for a few weeks as I make the transition. I hope this is not a source of confusion.

I will provide additional information on the transition as I make progress on additional content.

Storyworld Level Design Tasks - Storyworld Navigation

At the storyworld level the user can make a number of jumps that need to be considered because of their potential impact on the design of the call-to-action. A number of possible combinations of jumps at this level have been identified by Dena (Dena, 2007). The descriptions of these jumps have been modified slightly here:

• Intra-world: The user moves between stories (sometimes called “event-Realms”) within a storyworld. The stories may be on the same or different mediums (i.e. the user watches a DVD with a feature length movie and then jumps to another DVD with the story’s sequel or alternately from a novel to a DVD). Intra-world jumps occur at the story level of the story ontology.
• Inter-world: The user moves between stories in different storyworlds (i.e. the user watches a movie like Narnia that then goes to a movie or novel from the Lord of the Rings series). Inter-world jumps occur at the story level of the story ontology.
• Extra-world to world: This type of jump moves the user between fictional websites and real-life websites (i.e. the user reads a web-based novel set in a particular location and then jumps to a real-world website to find more information about that setting).
• Meta-world to world: This type of jump moves the user from a commentary about the storyworld to the storyworld itself (i.e. the user reads an online review about the storyworld and follows a link to it).

For information on the direction and timing of the jumps between units, see the interaction design tasks at the story level.

Storyworld Level Design Tasks - Entry Points

Just as the narrative design needs to ensure users are provided with the information needed to “hook” them on the story, the interaction design must ensure that the first call-to-action a user encounters provides the appropriate amount of information to enable an effective interaction with the transmedia narrative. The entry point call-to-action should quickly communicate the conventions for interacting with the narrative as a whole and then move the user into the narrative. For web-based entry points, the page that the primary URL points to -- typically the home page – is critical to establishing both the user conventions for both the narrative and interaction aspects of the transmedia narrative.

The amount of information needed at the beginning of a journey varies among individuals. Some – improvisational wayfinders – need only a little information while others who will do a lot of up-front planning will need a lot of information (Passini, 2000, pp. 90 - 91). Just adding information is not sufficient, however. That information needs to be appropriate and sufficient to provide informational wayfinders the cues they need while providing other users more information. It also needs to be focused on getting the user into the transmedia narrative and should not direct them away from it.

The entry point for Animism: The Gods’ Lake in the fall of 2011 was through a URL that took the user to a web page with a book-like visual introducing users to both the story and the site (see Figure 1). At a glance, the user is able to understand both the navigational cues and a feel for the narrative content. The entry point for Collapsus uses a Flash graphic to provide both a navigational cue into the narrative and a sense of what the story is about (see Figure 2).

The entry point to Burn Notice, on the other hand, is a much more traditional web page with a variety of cues, many of which point users away from the narrative elements of the television program (see Figure 3) including to other websites accessed via the banner ads on the page. A collapsible bar (not shown on the screen capture) also intrudes into the page and requires a user to collapse it in order to see more of the Burn Notice home page.

Source: APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, 2011)
Figure 1: Screen capture of the Animism: The Gods' Lake home page

Source: Submarine Channel (Submarine Channel, 2011)
Figure 2. Screen capture of the Collapsus home page

From a transmedia narrative interaction perspective, the design of the Animism and Collapsus entry points is appropriate while the Burn Notice is a mess that undermines the ability of users to quickly find the information they need to navigate the narrative. The Collapsus entry point is the most effective of the three in getting users into the narrative. There are only two active links – the “Enter Collapsus” link prominently displayed near the center of the page and a link to the website of the producers of Collapsus in the lower right corner – on the enter page. One click on the primary link takes users immediately into the narrative.

The Animism entry point has significantly more distractions – a total of 18 links – than the Collapsus site. These links are to:

• Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, where presumably more of the narrative content is located
• Pages within “The Book of Emissaries” displayed on the screen
• Various funders of the Animism project

While acknowledging one’s funders is probably a good move from a business perspective, it adds nothing to the narrative and providing links that direct users away from the narrative poor interaction design. Likewise, the links to various social media sites are distractions that do little to progress the narrative at this point. The links to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube provide no information about what awaits the users if they jump there. At this point, those links are also a temptation that may take users away from the entry point permanently. The navigation links into the narrative itself are also less than optimal. Two completely different styles are used. The “>” used as an arrow indicated to the user where to click in order to open the book while a small set of icons shaped as squares and diamonds underneath the book allowed navigation to various pages of the book. Unfortunately, those icons provided no information about what to expect at the other end of the interaction.

On the Burn Notice page an assortment of menu items, rotating Flash elements, advertising, embedded links, and images that serve as buttons provide a wide variety of navigational devices that leave the user with a huge amount of information to process before making a decision about going into the narrative. Very little information is provided as to what the user can expect at the other end of any links.

Source: USA Network (USA Network, 2011)
Figure 3: Screen capture of the Burn Notice home page

When designing the interactions for a transmedia narrative, particularly for an entry point to the narrative, the designer needs to ensure that only as much information as is absolutely necessary should be provided. That information needs to be located where users are making and executing navigational decisions (Passini, 2000, p. 91). Each decision in the decision plan requires information that is appropriate for both the decision to be made and the setting in which the decision making occurs (Passini, 2000, p. 94).

One of the challenges of transmedia narratives is that a user can enter the story or storyworld for the first time at multiple points. The design of the calls-to-action at each of those entry points should follow the guidelines identified for a single entry point.

A false affordance is a navigational cue that doesn’t work as the average user might expect. A page near the beginning of the Collapsus site features a world map with an interactive crosshair that can be moved over the map (see Figure 4). However, clicking it on a location does nothing. The only interaction possible on the page is to cursor over and click on the small photographs located low on the page. This false affordance distracts the user from the actual links present on the page and makes it appear that the page itself is broken, disrupting the narrative experience.

Source: Submarine Channel (Submarine Channel, 2011)
Figure 4. Example of a false affordance on the Collapsus site

Storyworld Level Design Tasks - Preliminary Wireframes

Wireframes allow designers to create the structural elements of the transmedia narrative project’s interfaces. A wireframe typically lays out the position and function of major components on web pages, applications, game scenes, and printed materials. A wireframe is an early planning document and will often be the basis for more detailed “look and feel” mockups that will be done later.

Storywold Level Design Tasks - Rules of Engagement Synopsis, Design Aesthetic & Style Guides

“Rules of Engagement” Synopsis

The “rules of engagement” synopsis is a high-level overview of the user engagement aspects of the transmedia narrative written from the user’s perspective. It should provide a “hands-on picture of the experience, including what users will be confronted with, what they expect to have to agree to, and challenges they will face” (Hayes G. P., 2011, p. 7). This synopsis should be one to two pages in length.

Design Aesthetic

The design aesthetic provides an overall vision behind the design that will cover all elements to the storyworld. It should describe and portray the characters and settings within the narrative and aesthetic features used for the various media and platforms that the content is published on (Hayes G. P., 2011, p. 10).

Style Guides

The design aesthetic will guide the development of the style guide, which provides precise details on color palettes, fonts, and other graphic design features. The style guide should be used for all materials produced for the project to ensure consistency and provide a sense of unity across multiple media.

A style guide for audio, music, title sequences, and similar media elements should also be developed to provide an overview of the style to be used for all media elements of the storyworld.