Beauchesne, Antoine (2023) The Self-Writing Encyclopedia UI Design for Emergent Story Discovery. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
One of the main appeals of emergent narrative games is the stories they can generate. However, these games tend to be complex simulations, resulting in a large amount of information that makes the discoverability of narratives challenging. To alleviate this problem, we believe redesigning the user interface and experience can facilitate the discovery process of stories. But what kind of interface could help even inexperienced players navigate easily such a large mass of information?
The answer we are looking for might be in web design, more specifically, Wikipedia and web browsers. This research tested two interfaces' iterations of a game. Participants with varying experiences with emergent narratives had to play with one of the interfaces and share their feedback on their experience during a recorded interview. The feedback collected on the first test helped redesign the second interface's iteration, while the feedback collected during the second test helped determine if the research was going in the right direction.
According to participants, the first interface's iteration was unsuitable for sifting through a large amount of information. However, the second interface's iteration, which had a design much more similar to websites, proved to be well received by participants. Because of these findings, we believe that web design might be a solution to solve the discoverability problems of stories in emergent narrative games.
Although the results point in a promising direction, a larger audience needs to play with the second interface to confirm that it is, in fact, approachable for a majority of players. Secondly, to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of the interface for facilitating the discovery of stories, we need a research method that can prove when players find a narrative in a quantifiable way and use this method with the second interface.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Design and Computation Arts |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Beauchesne, Antoine |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.Des. |
| Program: | Design |
| Date: | 6 February 2023 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Lessard, Jonathan |
| Keywords: | research-creation, emergent narrative, emergent story, information design, web design, user interface (UI), user experience (UX), encyclopedia, documentation |
| ID Code: | 992190 |
| Deposited By: | Antoine Beauchesne |
| Deposited On: | 21 Jun 2023 14:45 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jun 2023 14:45 |
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