interactive storytelling for different platforms · storytelling. the changing technology will...
TRANSCRIPT
Interactive Storytelling for Different Platforms
Masterrsquos Thesis in Interaction Technology and Design 20 credits
January 2007
David Moumlrtsell dit01dmlcsumuse
Supervisors
David Eriksson Haringkan Gulliksson
Abstract
iii
Abstract
There is an ongoing convergence between different platforms which means that
platforms such as TV cell phones and computers become more similar This also
leads to an increased number of platforms that may support some form of interactive
storytelling The changing technology will provide us with new ways of interacting
and therefore interactive storytelling will also change
In this thesis a number of different platforms possibly supporting interactive
storytelling are described Each platformrsquos interaction possibilities the contexts they
are used in and some current applications are discussed In addition to this there is a
discussion about the future of interactive storytelling for each of the platforms
An application has been made to show how an originally web based story can be
changed and adapted to fit another environment a simulated interactive television
environment Another purpose of this application was to demonstrate and exemplify
possibilities for interactive storytelling in this environment
It is concluded that the demands on interactive storytellers will increase since people
will have more freedom to decide what they want to do When moving a story from
one platform to another there are a number of different things to think about
Among these things we find the context in which the story will be read and the
degree of interaction offered by the used platform It is also important to decide early
in the project what platforms the story will be accessible on
Preface
v
Preface
This Masterrsquos thesis project has been performed within Akademiker i foumlretag a
project whose purpose is to contribute in the development of small and medium
sized companies in Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten The project Akademiker i
foumlretag provides the companies within the region with an opportunity to get
development projects carried out by students newly graduates and researchers from
universities and colleges throughout the country Through an extensive visiting
activity the companiesrsquo development projects are identified and are mediated via a
database on the internet examensjobbnu
Financiers are the European Unions structural funds county administrative boards
of Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten together with participating municipalities and
companies
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 9
2 Interactive storytelling 11
21 Storytelling 12
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling 12
23 Storytelling structures 14
24 Applying interactive storytelling 17
25 Games and storytelling 20
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising 21
27 Different levels of interaction 22
3 Different media platforms 25
31 Interactive Television set 25
32 Mobile devices 29
33 Game consoles 32
34 Personal computers 34
35 Other platforms 36
4 The demo application 37
41 Technical solution 37
42 Planet in need 38
43 Original version 39
44 Full version 42
45 Light version 47
46 Limitations of the prototype 49
5 Design guidelines 51
51 Interaction possibilities 51
52 Text 52
53 Navigation 53
54 Sound 55
55 Advertising specific guidelines 55
6 Discussion 57
Acknowledgements 59
References 61
Introduction
9
1Introduction
The current development of technology is that different platforms become more
similar This is often described as a convergence between different media and platforms
(Jenkins 2004) In this project media is defined as information or material in some
form and a platform can be described as a tool used to access a medium Examples
of different platforms are
bull TV sets ndash Mainly used to access the TV medium but also used for teletext
DVD and other media
bull Computers ndash The main medium is the internet in which there are many ways
to access other media such as radio and TV but a computer can be used to
access CD- and DVD-ROMs as well
bull Cell phones ndash Along with their roles as telephones and text messengers
many phones can be used to access the radio medium
Another important feature of many new media is that they are digital rather than
analog Digitally stored information demands less bandwidth for transmission it is
easily stored and can be accessed quickly (Miller 2004) Along with the technical
benefits of storing and transmitting information digitally storing it digitally makes it
easier to use in interactive applications Therefore more and more platforms will be
hosting interactive activities The convergence between different platforms makes it
possible to access and interact with interactive stories in different situations This
technological progress might also lead to a change in the way an interactive story is
told since the possible ways of interacting with the story changes
This project is made together with North Kingdom in Skelleftearing which as their web
site states provide innovative interactive design solutions They describe themselves
as ldquoa creative digital agencyrdquo North Kingdom creates advanced and ambitious
interactive web solutions most often in Flash for advertising andor communication
purposes Their projects are sometimes executed directly with clients and sometimes
in cooperation with other design agencies They have the resources to participate in
all parts of the design process including the creative process of producing a
conceptual design adjusting this concept to the customersrsquo needs and working out a
design proposal After this is done the work is passed on to the production part of
the process Illustrations animation 3D-modeling and programming are parts of this
process where North Kingdom also has the knowledge necessary to contribute
Since many of the productions made by North Kingdom contain storytelling
elements it is important for them to be continuously updated in the area of
interactive storytelling As a part of this process this projectrsquos aim was to present an
overview of a number of different platforms possibly useful for interactive
storytelling how they have been used so far and how they can be exploited in the
near future
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Abstract
iii
Abstract
There is an ongoing convergence between different platforms which means that
platforms such as TV cell phones and computers become more similar This also
leads to an increased number of platforms that may support some form of interactive
storytelling The changing technology will provide us with new ways of interacting
and therefore interactive storytelling will also change
In this thesis a number of different platforms possibly supporting interactive
storytelling are described Each platformrsquos interaction possibilities the contexts they
are used in and some current applications are discussed In addition to this there is a
discussion about the future of interactive storytelling for each of the platforms
An application has been made to show how an originally web based story can be
changed and adapted to fit another environment a simulated interactive television
environment Another purpose of this application was to demonstrate and exemplify
possibilities for interactive storytelling in this environment
It is concluded that the demands on interactive storytellers will increase since people
will have more freedom to decide what they want to do When moving a story from
one platform to another there are a number of different things to think about
Among these things we find the context in which the story will be read and the
degree of interaction offered by the used platform It is also important to decide early
in the project what platforms the story will be accessible on
Preface
v
Preface
This Masterrsquos thesis project has been performed within Akademiker i foumlretag a
project whose purpose is to contribute in the development of small and medium
sized companies in Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten The project Akademiker i
foumlretag provides the companies within the region with an opportunity to get
development projects carried out by students newly graduates and researchers from
universities and colleges throughout the country Through an extensive visiting
activity the companiesrsquo development projects are identified and are mediated via a
database on the internet examensjobbnu
Financiers are the European Unions structural funds county administrative boards
of Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten together with participating municipalities and
companies
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 9
2 Interactive storytelling 11
21 Storytelling 12
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling 12
23 Storytelling structures 14
24 Applying interactive storytelling 17
25 Games and storytelling 20
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising 21
27 Different levels of interaction 22
3 Different media platforms 25
31 Interactive Television set 25
32 Mobile devices 29
33 Game consoles 32
34 Personal computers 34
35 Other platforms 36
4 The demo application 37
41 Technical solution 37
42 Planet in need 38
43 Original version 39
44 Full version 42
45 Light version 47
46 Limitations of the prototype 49
5 Design guidelines 51
51 Interaction possibilities 51
52 Text 52
53 Navigation 53
54 Sound 55
55 Advertising specific guidelines 55
6 Discussion 57
Acknowledgements 59
References 61
Introduction
9
1Introduction
The current development of technology is that different platforms become more
similar This is often described as a convergence between different media and platforms
(Jenkins 2004) In this project media is defined as information or material in some
form and a platform can be described as a tool used to access a medium Examples
of different platforms are
bull TV sets ndash Mainly used to access the TV medium but also used for teletext
DVD and other media
bull Computers ndash The main medium is the internet in which there are many ways
to access other media such as radio and TV but a computer can be used to
access CD- and DVD-ROMs as well
bull Cell phones ndash Along with their roles as telephones and text messengers
many phones can be used to access the radio medium
Another important feature of many new media is that they are digital rather than
analog Digitally stored information demands less bandwidth for transmission it is
easily stored and can be accessed quickly (Miller 2004) Along with the technical
benefits of storing and transmitting information digitally storing it digitally makes it
easier to use in interactive applications Therefore more and more platforms will be
hosting interactive activities The convergence between different platforms makes it
possible to access and interact with interactive stories in different situations This
technological progress might also lead to a change in the way an interactive story is
told since the possible ways of interacting with the story changes
This project is made together with North Kingdom in Skelleftearing which as their web
site states provide innovative interactive design solutions They describe themselves
as ldquoa creative digital agencyrdquo North Kingdom creates advanced and ambitious
interactive web solutions most often in Flash for advertising andor communication
purposes Their projects are sometimes executed directly with clients and sometimes
in cooperation with other design agencies They have the resources to participate in
all parts of the design process including the creative process of producing a
conceptual design adjusting this concept to the customersrsquo needs and working out a
design proposal After this is done the work is passed on to the production part of
the process Illustrations animation 3D-modeling and programming are parts of this
process where North Kingdom also has the knowledge necessary to contribute
Since many of the productions made by North Kingdom contain storytelling
elements it is important for them to be continuously updated in the area of
interactive storytelling As a part of this process this projectrsquos aim was to present an
overview of a number of different platforms possibly useful for interactive
storytelling how they have been used so far and how they can be exploited in the
near future
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Preface
v
Preface
This Masterrsquos thesis project has been performed within Akademiker i foumlretag a
project whose purpose is to contribute in the development of small and medium
sized companies in Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten The project Akademiker i
foumlretag provides the companies within the region with an opportunity to get
development projects carried out by students newly graduates and researchers from
universities and colleges throughout the country Through an extensive visiting
activity the companiesrsquo development projects are identified and are mediated via a
database on the internet examensjobbnu
Financiers are the European Unions structural funds county administrative boards
of Vaumlsterbotten and Norrbotten together with participating municipalities and
companies
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 9
2 Interactive storytelling 11
21 Storytelling 12
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling 12
23 Storytelling structures 14
24 Applying interactive storytelling 17
25 Games and storytelling 20
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising 21
27 Different levels of interaction 22
3 Different media platforms 25
31 Interactive Television set 25
32 Mobile devices 29
33 Game consoles 32
34 Personal computers 34
35 Other platforms 36
4 The demo application 37
41 Technical solution 37
42 Planet in need 38
43 Original version 39
44 Full version 42
45 Light version 47
46 Limitations of the prototype 49
5 Design guidelines 51
51 Interaction possibilities 51
52 Text 52
53 Navigation 53
54 Sound 55
55 Advertising specific guidelines 55
6 Discussion 57
Acknowledgements 59
References 61
Introduction
9
1Introduction
The current development of technology is that different platforms become more
similar This is often described as a convergence between different media and platforms
(Jenkins 2004) In this project media is defined as information or material in some
form and a platform can be described as a tool used to access a medium Examples
of different platforms are
bull TV sets ndash Mainly used to access the TV medium but also used for teletext
DVD and other media
bull Computers ndash The main medium is the internet in which there are many ways
to access other media such as radio and TV but a computer can be used to
access CD- and DVD-ROMs as well
bull Cell phones ndash Along with their roles as telephones and text messengers
many phones can be used to access the radio medium
Another important feature of many new media is that they are digital rather than
analog Digitally stored information demands less bandwidth for transmission it is
easily stored and can be accessed quickly (Miller 2004) Along with the technical
benefits of storing and transmitting information digitally storing it digitally makes it
easier to use in interactive applications Therefore more and more platforms will be
hosting interactive activities The convergence between different platforms makes it
possible to access and interact with interactive stories in different situations This
technological progress might also lead to a change in the way an interactive story is
told since the possible ways of interacting with the story changes
This project is made together with North Kingdom in Skelleftearing which as their web
site states provide innovative interactive design solutions They describe themselves
as ldquoa creative digital agencyrdquo North Kingdom creates advanced and ambitious
interactive web solutions most often in Flash for advertising andor communication
purposes Their projects are sometimes executed directly with clients and sometimes
in cooperation with other design agencies They have the resources to participate in
all parts of the design process including the creative process of producing a
conceptual design adjusting this concept to the customersrsquo needs and working out a
design proposal After this is done the work is passed on to the production part of
the process Illustrations animation 3D-modeling and programming are parts of this
process where North Kingdom also has the knowledge necessary to contribute
Since many of the productions made by North Kingdom contain storytelling
elements it is important for them to be continuously updated in the area of
interactive storytelling As a part of this process this projectrsquos aim was to present an
overview of a number of different platforms possibly useful for interactive
storytelling how they have been used so far and how they can be exploited in the
near future
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 9
2 Interactive storytelling 11
21 Storytelling 12
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling 12
23 Storytelling structures 14
24 Applying interactive storytelling 17
25 Games and storytelling 20
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising 21
27 Different levels of interaction 22
3 Different media platforms 25
31 Interactive Television set 25
32 Mobile devices 29
33 Game consoles 32
34 Personal computers 34
35 Other platforms 36
4 The demo application 37
41 Technical solution 37
42 Planet in need 38
43 Original version 39
44 Full version 42
45 Light version 47
46 Limitations of the prototype 49
5 Design guidelines 51
51 Interaction possibilities 51
52 Text 52
53 Navigation 53
54 Sound 55
55 Advertising specific guidelines 55
6 Discussion 57
Acknowledgements 59
References 61
Introduction
9
1Introduction
The current development of technology is that different platforms become more
similar This is often described as a convergence between different media and platforms
(Jenkins 2004) In this project media is defined as information or material in some
form and a platform can be described as a tool used to access a medium Examples
of different platforms are
bull TV sets ndash Mainly used to access the TV medium but also used for teletext
DVD and other media
bull Computers ndash The main medium is the internet in which there are many ways
to access other media such as radio and TV but a computer can be used to
access CD- and DVD-ROMs as well
bull Cell phones ndash Along with their roles as telephones and text messengers
many phones can be used to access the radio medium
Another important feature of many new media is that they are digital rather than
analog Digitally stored information demands less bandwidth for transmission it is
easily stored and can be accessed quickly (Miller 2004) Along with the technical
benefits of storing and transmitting information digitally storing it digitally makes it
easier to use in interactive applications Therefore more and more platforms will be
hosting interactive activities The convergence between different platforms makes it
possible to access and interact with interactive stories in different situations This
technological progress might also lead to a change in the way an interactive story is
told since the possible ways of interacting with the story changes
This project is made together with North Kingdom in Skelleftearing which as their web
site states provide innovative interactive design solutions They describe themselves
as ldquoa creative digital agencyrdquo North Kingdom creates advanced and ambitious
interactive web solutions most often in Flash for advertising andor communication
purposes Their projects are sometimes executed directly with clients and sometimes
in cooperation with other design agencies They have the resources to participate in
all parts of the design process including the creative process of producing a
conceptual design adjusting this concept to the customersrsquo needs and working out a
design proposal After this is done the work is passed on to the production part of
the process Illustrations animation 3D-modeling and programming are parts of this
process where North Kingdom also has the knowledge necessary to contribute
Since many of the productions made by North Kingdom contain storytelling
elements it is important for them to be continuously updated in the area of
interactive storytelling As a part of this process this projectrsquos aim was to present an
overview of a number of different platforms possibly useful for interactive
storytelling how they have been used so far and how they can be exploited in the
near future
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Introduction
9
1Introduction
The current development of technology is that different platforms become more
similar This is often described as a convergence between different media and platforms
(Jenkins 2004) In this project media is defined as information or material in some
form and a platform can be described as a tool used to access a medium Examples
of different platforms are
bull TV sets ndash Mainly used to access the TV medium but also used for teletext
DVD and other media
bull Computers ndash The main medium is the internet in which there are many ways
to access other media such as radio and TV but a computer can be used to
access CD- and DVD-ROMs as well
bull Cell phones ndash Along with their roles as telephones and text messengers
many phones can be used to access the radio medium
Another important feature of many new media is that they are digital rather than
analog Digitally stored information demands less bandwidth for transmission it is
easily stored and can be accessed quickly (Miller 2004) Along with the technical
benefits of storing and transmitting information digitally storing it digitally makes it
easier to use in interactive applications Therefore more and more platforms will be
hosting interactive activities The convergence between different platforms makes it
possible to access and interact with interactive stories in different situations This
technological progress might also lead to a change in the way an interactive story is
told since the possible ways of interacting with the story changes
This project is made together with North Kingdom in Skelleftearing which as their web
site states provide innovative interactive design solutions They describe themselves
as ldquoa creative digital agencyrdquo North Kingdom creates advanced and ambitious
interactive web solutions most often in Flash for advertising andor communication
purposes Their projects are sometimes executed directly with clients and sometimes
in cooperation with other design agencies They have the resources to participate in
all parts of the design process including the creative process of producing a
conceptual design adjusting this concept to the customersrsquo needs and working out a
design proposal After this is done the work is passed on to the production part of
the process Illustrations animation 3D-modeling and programming are parts of this
process where North Kingdom also has the knowledge necessary to contribute
Since many of the productions made by North Kingdom contain storytelling
elements it is important for them to be continuously updated in the area of
interactive storytelling As a part of this process this projectrsquos aim was to present an
overview of a number of different platforms possibly useful for interactive
storytelling how they have been used so far and how they can be exploited in the
near future
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
10
Another part of this project has been to demonstrate how a web based interactive
story can be moved and adapted to an interactive television environment In order to
do this one of North Kingdomrsquos finished web productions called Planet in need1
has
been altered and adapted to a simulated interactive television environment This
application demonstrates some of the issues and possibilities for storytelling in such
an environment Since the focus in this project is on the content of the production
not on the technology the technology that would be required in order to make this
production work in a real interactive TV environment has not been considered in
this project
1 See the original version at httpwwwplanetinneedcom
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
11
2Interactive storytelling
To be able to answer the question of how the changing technology affects
storytelling we first need to understand what digital storytelling means According to
Miller (Miller 2004) digital storytelling is ldquonarrative entertainment that reaches its
audience via digital technology and mediardquo A minor change to this definition
namely changing the word ldquodigitalrdquo to ldquoanalogrdquo would provide a definition that
could be used to describe what analog storytelling is Both kinds of storytelling can be
non-interactive as well as interactive An important difference between digital and
analog media is also according to Miller (Miller 2004) that digital media can easier
support interactivity The following table describes different kinds of media in the
context of these different properties
Analog Digital
Non-interactive Theatre cassette tape DVD (film) CD (music)
Interactive Role playing game Computer games
Table 21 Examples of different kinds of media
The non-interactive examples are quite straightforward ndash in most cases cassette
tapes DVD movies and music or audio book CDs present some kind of non-
interactive story Theatre plays differ from these media in that they are performed
live and must be experienced at a certain place at a certain time The example is not
perfect since a play can be filmed and shown on some other platform There are also
examples of ldquointeractiverdquo live theatre where teams of actors compete in improvising
around topics or scenes suggested by the audience
Concerning the interactive examples a role playing game is fundamentally an
interactive experience the Game Master (GM) is the one responsible for driving the
plot forward by reacting to the playersrsquo actions in an appropriate way The GM
usually has a game plan to follow but unexpected events or actions from the players
may force the GM to make changes ndash the only limit is the participantsrsquo imagination
(Peinardo 2004) The best example of a digital and interactive story is perhaps a
computer game There are different kinds of computer games but many games for
instance start by some kind of video or animation introducing the plot of the game
Often games present to its players a fictional world which it is up to them to save or
explore interactively
Interaction can be described as some mutual action between two or more participators
In the context of television the possibility to change the volume and to switch
channel can be seen as interactivity However these actions only change settings on
how the television set presents the signals and how the speakers are set In this
project the focus is on the possibility to interact more with the content of television
Examples of this could be the choice to show extra material related to the current
TV show or the possibility to choose what action the main character should take
Later in this section a table of different degrees of interaction will be presented
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
12
21 Storytelling
Storytelling is about telling stories but what then is a story According to Websterrsquos
online dictionary1
a story is ldquoan account describing incidents or eventsrdquo Stories can
be situated at different times and at different places They can describe real events
that have occurred long ago or recently Different stories can describe the same
event from different points of view or for different purposes Stories come in many
different forms such as myths legends plays movies novels documentaries
anecdotes and jokes Common purposes for telling a story include teaching
promotion information and ndash probably the most common purpose ndash entertainment
We here define the author of a story as the person or team that has created the story
The reader of a story is the one who reads watches listens to or in any other way
traverses or explores the story
According to Povinelli as cited by Miller (Miller 2004) the human species has an
innate need to connect the past present and the future and hence also a need to tell
stories Stories can aid us in understanding our own and other cultures and help us
better understand the world (Glassner 2001) They can also ease our learning of new
things such as a new language
22 A taxonomy for interactive digital storytelling
To identify the different building blocks of an interactive digital story in this report a
number of properties that might affect the telling of an interactive digital story are
described The following figure (See Figure 21) shows the different properties and
their relationship The concepts in this figure are all described and discussed later in
the report Another attempt to develop a taxonomy for digital storytelling has been
made by Paul and Fiebich (Paul and Fiebich 2005)
In the taxonomy developed by Paul and Fiebich five main elements of interactive
digital storytelling are discussed
bull Media ndash The material or information in the story can have different
properties Paul and Fiebich here discuss properties such as media type (eg
text video and photo) and whether it must be experienced live or if it is
accessible at anytime
bull Action ndash This element concerns the actions in the story Questions discussed
include whether the story is user or content driven and if the content itself is
static or dynamic
bull Relationship ndash This discusses the relationship between the user and the
content It is stated that this relationship can be open or closed in a number
of different ways For instance is the story linear or non-linear and is it in
some way customizable
bull Context ndash Paul and Fiebich use the concept context in a more limited sense
than how it is used in the rest of this report They have a more in-content
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionstory accessed 2006-12-12
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
13
view of context and so they discuss what different kinds of content can
surround the story in question
bull Communication ndash This element contains a discussion about different kinds
of communication in a digital story For instance different types of
communication (eg mail chat and forum) are discussed as well as the
purpose of the communication
Paul and Fiebichrsquos taxonomy only discusses storytelling properties within the current
medium it does not suppport discussions about for instance the environment
surrounding the user when someone experiences a digital story
The attempted taxonomy in this report will discuss the degree of interaction the
structure of storytelling and a number of application areas These topics will be
covered in this section Context for instance the aspects listed in Figure 21 is tightly
connected with the platform used and will therefore be discussed separately for each
platform in a later section
Figure 21 Properties of interactive digital storytelling
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
14
23 Storytelling structures
Stories come in different forms In this section a number of different storytelling
structures will be described
LINEAR
The most common story structure is linear which means that one event is followed
by another event often chronologically A linear story is intended to be traversed
from point A to point B then from point B to point C etc (See Figure 22) If a
linear story is explored in some other way it is probably difficult for the reader to
understand the story A linear story is most often non-interactive and it is the form
used in most books and movies
Figure 22 A linear story The story should be read in numerical order
The plot in linear stories does not always occur chronologically In stories with
several parallel branches it is difficult to follow each part of the story simultaneously
Therefore such stories often follow one part at a time switching between the
different branches at appropriate times (See Figure 23) One example of this is
found in JRR Tolkienrsquos The Lord of the Rings where there are several parallel stories
Figure 23 Another linear story but with several branches The story should be read in numerical
order
Another less common variant of a linear story which does not occur in
chronological order is found in the movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
The plot is presented in a backward fashion where the event occurring first in time
occurs last in the story To follow this story chronologically the story would have to
be traversed from point D to point E then from point C to point D etc (See Figure
24)
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
15
Figure 24 A special case of a linear story a reversed linear story The story should be read in
numerical order
The three mentioned story structures all tell linear stories no matter if there is one
single or several storylines According to Miller (Miller 2004) an interactive story has
to be non-linear An interactive story can include a central storyline but since the
readers of the story have the possibility to explore the story in various ways it cannot
be linear Miller also discusses a number of different structures for interactive stories
of which four are described here
STRING OF PEARLS
The structure closest to an ordinary linear story but that can allow the user to act
within the story is called the string of pearls (See Figure 25) The idea is that there are
critical points in the story that the user must always pass through to be able to come
to the next part of the story but between these points the user is allowed more
freedom This structure is often seen in computer games where the user may have a
critical task to perform before advancing to the next level The user may be free to
explore the environment or perform other non-critical tasks but in order to get to
the next level this critical task must be done
Figure 25 String of pearls Here each letter describes a part of the story and the thin lines between
the pearls describe critical points that must be passed to advance to the next part of the story
MODULAR STRUCTURE
Another structure Miller denotes as the modular structure (See Figure 26) According
to Miller this structure offers the user a number of different areas where the user can
go in any order When one area has been visited the user can pick another area until
all areas have been visited This structure is often found in educational applications
and is in some way similar to an ordinary web page Ordinary web pages are often
divided into different modules which can be accessed in any order
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
16
Figure 26 Modular structure The letters represent different parts of the story The parts can be
visited in any order
FUNNELPYRAMID STRUCTURE
The third structure described by Miller is called funnels or pyramids This kind of
structure initially offers the user a great degree of freedom and not much linearity
The freedom is then narrowed down towards the end (See Figure 27) This kind of
structure can be found in many adventure games such as the games in the Monkey
Island1
series In the first parts of the game the environment consists of several
different areas where the player can go and a number of different tasks that can be
done in any order However later in the game the environments are narrowed down
and the tasks the player has to conquer gets more tricky
Figure 27 FunnelPyramid structure Each letter represents a part of the story In part A the user has
a great deal of freedom which is successively narrowed down as the user advances through the story
ROUNDED STRUCTURE
The last structure discussed here which is also mentioned by Miller is called the
rounded structure (See Figure 28) Stories with rounded structure offer their users
almost unlimited ndash within certain limits ndash freedom On the other hand these
1 For example Escape From Monkey Island httpwwwlucasartscomproductsmonkey4 accessed
2006-12-15
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
17
structures do not have a central storyline One example of an application with this
kind of structure is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of
Warcraft1
The players are placed in an enormous virtual world There is no main
quest but there are a large number of quests that the players can perform if they
want to As players perform these different quests they also learn about the history
of the game world and get to understand how the different people in the game
world are related to each other
Figure 28 Rounded structure Each part of the story is always accessible and can be read in any order
24 Applying interactive storytelling
In the following section a number of areas where interactive storytelling can be
useful are described Figure 29 is an attempt to structure the relationship between
the different concepts and to bring some clarity to this area since many concepts are
closely related to each other The following list provides a description of each of the
concepts discussed in this section
bull Promotion ndash A message distributed for lobbying purposes A promotional
campaign aims to inform or persuade people that something ndash it could be a
product a company an opinion an idea or something else ndash is good or bad
in some way According to Websterrsquos online dictionary2
promotion is the
ldquoencouragement of the progress or growth of somethingrdquo
bull Branding ndash The purpose of branding is to implant into a product or brand
an emotional association that makes people feel for example joy or
happiness (Spool 1996) Branding is used to make a productbrand to
distinguish from other productsbrands in the same segment
1 httpwwwworldofwarcraftcom accessed 2006-12-15
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionpromotion accessed 2006-12-12
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
18
bull Communication ndash With a wide definition communication is about
conveying a message about a product brand or companyrsquos ideas knowledge
values and attitudes1
bull Advertising ndash Advertising can be described as promotion taken a step
further with emphasis on selling the advertised product Websterrsquos online
dictionary claims2
that the goals of advertising include ldquoshort or long term
increases in sales market share awareness product information and image
improvementrdquo One example of an interactive advertising campaign is of
course the Planet in need site
bull Entertainment ndash The concept of entertainment needs no further definition
it is an activity undertaken mainly for the purpose of having fun Computer
games are a very large part of all entertaining interactive storytelling
bull Education ndash Just like entertainment education is a well-known concept
education is done to teach someone something It is difficult to point out the
differences between education and edutainment (described below) when
interactive storytelling is the method used learning new things can be
entertaining by itself
The three following concepts are not as established as the already introduced
ones However these concepts are more or less important within the area of
interactive storytelling and are therefore included here
bull Edutainment ndash The word is a combination of the words education and
entertainment which is also what this concept is about The description of this
word given by Websterrsquos online dictionary is3
ldquointeractive education and
entertainment services or software [hellip]rdquo One of the benefits that come with
entertaining education via interactive storytelling is that it is possible to
involve more of the studentsrsquo senses vision as well as hearing can be
activated The student will also use the mouse to perform different tasks and
perhaps they can use a microphone as well One example of interactive
storytelling with an educational (and entertaining) purpose is the Official US
Army game Americarsquos Army4
By going through different exercises and
performing in-game missions the players learn about different aspects of real
military duties
bull Infotainment ndash This is closely related to edutainment a mix of information
and entertainment Miller (Miller 2004) notes that it might be difficult to
distinguish information from education education also is about conveying
information Miller suggests that it might be the purpose rather than the
content that defines the difference between the two concepts By that she
means that with education the intention is to teach someone something
while information is less formal more optional Two examples of
infotainment sites are the anti-smoking campaign SmokeWeek5
and the
1 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitioncommunication 2006-12-12
2 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionadvertise accessed 2006-12-12
3 httpwwwwebsters-online-dictionaryorgdefinitionedutainment accessed 2006-12-12
4 httpamericasarmycom accessed 2007-01-06
5 httpextranetottosemediaSmokeweekSmokeweek_ENGseottohtm accessed 2007-01-02
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
19
Festmetoden1
campaign to have mainly young people to think about their way
of drinking alcohol
bull Advergaming ndash Sometimes also called promotional gaming or advertainment
(Miller 2004) This concept is often implemented in the form of interactive
banners where the users are encouraged to do a simple task (Wegert 2003)
It could for instance be to play a simple ping-pong game or to move a match
to light a number of candles However there are more advanced examples of
how interactive storytelling in an entertaining way has been used for
advertising see for example the Wolfboys2
campaign
Figure 29 The figure above roughly describes how these different areas are related It can be seen that
infotainment and edutainment are very closely related and that there is a group of concepts in the
bottom that are quite closely related The edutainment infotainment and advergaming concepts are
mixes of the surrounding areas
1 httpwwwfestmetodense accessed 2007-01-02
2 httpwwwwolfboysca accessed 2006-12-15
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
20
25 Games and storytelling
There has been an intense debate concerning whether computer games can seen as
interactive stories or not Juul (Juul 2001) argues that narration and interaction
cannot occur at the same time He admits that games and stories may share some
properties but that the experience of playing a game in no way can be compared to
reading a book Murray (Murray 2005) claims that this restricted view requires a
player of a game to ldquobe able to look at highly emotive narrative semiotically charged
objects and see only their abstract game functionrdquo
To me it seems obvious that it is possible to tell stories in a game Juul may have a
point in that narration and interaction can not occur simultaneously but there are
lots of examples in different computer games of how to solve this problem One
common way is to interpose short non-interactive parts where the player is told
another part of the story Another way is weaving the story into all of the tasks facing
the player
Anyway interactive storytelling and computer games at least seem to share some
properties Both games and interactive stories often create a world which it is up to
the user to explore learn more about and maybe even affect There might be a
difference concerning the usersrsquo attitude towards interacting Adams (Adams 2005)
says in a lecture about interactive storytelling
Itrsquos not our job to tell stories Itrsquos our job to create worlds in which stories can happen To build
playgrounds for the mind
Perhaps this is a way to express the difference between games and stories in a game
the narrative is not as strictly prewritten as it might be in a story In a game the users
expect to have a larger degree of participation and possibility to have an influence on
what is going on in the fictive world In an interactive story that is not a game the
user might have a more passive attitude
An important property when it comes to all different kinds of storytelling no matter
what shape it comes in is called transparency The effect of transparency (Murray
1997) is that the users of the medium do not see the medium or the platform but
only the story itself One way to achieve transparency
could be by avoiding elements that remind the users
that they access the content via a platform A simple
example can be found in the original version of the
Planet in need campaign Instead of using the
commonly used rdquohomerdquo or rdquomain menurdquo the
concept rdquoto planet systemrdquo is used to return to the
main menu (See ) In this way the story remains
transparent even if the action the user takes actually is
an ordinary navigation action
Another important property of interactive stories is that they allow its users to get
immersed into the world of the story without consciously thinking about and reacting
Figure 210Figure 211 To planet system icon
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
21
to all unbelievable things going on in the story world This phenomenon is often
called the suspension of disbelief1
As an interactive storyteller this is an important factor
to think about when creating a story For instance in a computer game errors in the
graphics or the control of the game character can disturb the feeling of immersion
(Hecker 2000)
26 Interactive storytelling and advertising
For companies within the advertising area an effective way of mediating the message
is of great importance As we have already seen interactive storytelling can provide a
good way to create engaging stories Within the advertising community there is a
concept known as AIDA2
which stands for Attention Interest Desire and Action
These four steps describe how to get a potential customer to buy a certain product
bull Attention ndash First the advertisement has to catch the potential customerrsquos
attention Otherwise the message will not even be received and will therefore
not have any impact whatsoever
bull Interest ndash If the attention is caught the message sent must be able to make
the viewer interested in the product
bull Desire ndash The next step is to arouse a desire to the advertised product
Without the desire to own a certain product the customer will never buy it
bull Action ndash The fourth and probably the most difficult step is to get the
customer to act that is to buy the product
In order to achieve this interactive storytelling can be an effective tool Confucius
once said ldquoI hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understandrdquo With
this quotation in mind it is easy to understand that engaging potential customers by
letting them interact with the advertisement is an effective way of catching their
attention Wegert (Wegert 2003) notes that interactive web banners have higher
click-through rates than ordinary banners Another positive effect of the interaction
possibilities is that the effort needed for a user to perform the action step of the
AIDA-model may decrease If a TV commercial could offer its viewers the
possibility to order a certain product directly from the couch without having to go to
the computer to order it online or having to go to a physical store to buy it the step
from desire to action would be shorter and it is likely that more people would take that
step
There are some interesting questions to consider in this area In what way can an
advertisement catch the usersrsquo attention without them feeling disturbed And is there
a good way to present a product in a way such that the users do not think about that
they are watching a commercial spot Another question of great importance here is
how a user can be encouraged to take the action step to buy the advertised product
When it comes to the story in this project ndash the Planet in need production ndash it is an
advertising campaign created with increased milk sales as its purpose The users ndash the
1 Originally coined by Coleridge (Coleridge 1817)
2 Read more at httpenwikipediaorgwikiAIDA accessed 2006-12-20
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
22
possible customers ndash are informed about the benefits of drinking milk and about the
ailments that might occur if not It is not a linear story and it is not a story where the
user can make choices to drive the plot forward With the quote by Adams in mind
it is a world where a story happens and it is up to the user to explore what parts of
the story he or she finds interesting
27 Different levels of interaction
Concerning the possibility to interact with a story the degree of interaction covers a
wide range The following table (Table 22) is the result of an attempt to shed some
light upon this topic
Degree of
interaction
Actions possible Example application
High Affect objects in the content
Influence on the story
TV-show with selectable
camera angle
TV Cabo (see platform
section)
Medium Access additional information
Interactions not directly
affecting the content decide
when to view
TV-show with subtexts or
other additional inform-
ation accessible via tele-
text
TiVo
Low No direct interaction with the
content cross-media interaction
TV-shows with
telephoneSMS voting
Very low Affecting how to view the
content
Ordinary television
Table 22 Description of some different levels of interaction and some example applications
With a very low degree of interaction the user obviously has very little influence on
the content On an ordinary TV set changing channel or the sound volume are good
examples of operations possible at this level or interaction A low degree of
interaction at least allows the user to send information in some way to the content
provider In the case of television it is common to give the viewers the possibility to
send an SMS or to make a phone call to participate in a voting on some topic When
the interaction level increases another step the users can access additional
information that is connected to the content of the story Again with TV as the
example this kind of interaction could provide users with information about for
instance the actors in a sitcom or enable users to discuss the current football game
in the corresponding forum The highest degree of interaction discussed in this
report is achieved if the users directly can affect objects in the content or have the
possibility to make decisions to drive the plot forward (preferably in a direction
decided by the user)
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Interactive storytelling
23
There are two concepts lean back and lean forward which can be used to roughly
determine the degree of a medium or a platform Both words reflect the way a user is
often positioned (Miller 2004) when using a mediumplatform with a certain degree
of interactivity When the user is passive watching TV or listening to radio leaning
back in the sofa is a common position However when playing a computer game or
in some other way interacting leaning forward is a more common position
When creating a story the degree of interaction is worth thinking about Central
questions are ldquowhat degree of interaction does the platform in question supportrdquo
and ldquowhat degree of interaction are the users interested inrdquo Other questions could
be ldquoWhat interaction level matches the storyrdquo and ldquowhat interaction level matches
the purpose of the storyrdquo
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
24
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
25
3 Different media platforms
In this section a number of platforms that enable some form of interactive
storytelling will be described and discussed This section contains a description of
what each platform is and how it is currently used It also gives a brief prediction of
how it might be used in a few years Another topic discussed is the interaction
properties of each platform
31 Interactive Television set
There are many definitions of interactive television (iTV) Brady Communications
defines iTV1
as ldquoTwo-way communications between the TV viewer and service providersrdquo
Another definition provided by Quico (Quico 2003) claims that ldquointeractive television
can be defined as the result of the convergence between television and interactive technologiesrdquo In
general what distinguishes iTV from ordinary television is the possibility for users to
return information to the TV Using this definition a simple phone call to the TV
studio would fulfill the definition of iTV As we will see later the most common way
of achieving interactive television is by using another medium as a return channel
BRIEF HISTORY
In the 1970rsquos several trials for interactive television were performed The main
problems at that time were due to technical issues such as that the equipment was
not fully developed and therefore not always reliable and often expensive (Carey
1997) With the invention and rapid growth of the internet in the 1990rsquos many of
these problems were solved (Stewart 1999) Now with improved technological
conditions there were experiments in the middle of the 90rsquos where very advanced
kinds of interactivity were tested (Jensen 2004) Jensen however notes that the iTV
experiments around the millennium were scaled down to be more realistic and more
closely connected to technological progress
Jensen identifies three different forms of iTV depending on how the interaction is
achieved First Enhanced TV is described as a ldquosuper teletextrdquo service interactive
content is broadcasted and displayed on top of the program content The second
form of iTV described by Jensen is called personalized TV which means that a Digital
Video Recorder2
(DVR) stores the broadcasted content on a hard disk and allows the
user to pause rewind or fast forward in the recorded content while the recorder
continues to record the broadcasted material The third and according to Jensen
most common way of achieving interaction is called cross-media interaction By using
another medium as a return channel such as the web or SMS the viewers can
interact with the TV-program
1httpwwwbradycommunicationscomperspectivesglossaryaspx accessed 2006-09-15
2 Also called Personal Video Recorder PVR
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
26
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SERVICES
One recent example of such cross-media interaction is the Swedish Televisionrsquos cell
phone application Kvick1
Users can download this application to their cell phones
and instead of sending SMS messages Kvick uses the GPRS or 3G channel for the
transmission of information This makes the communication cheaper and the users
can be more active in their interaction This service has ndash so far ndash been available
during a few events including the campaign before the Swedish general election in
2006
Two examples of digital TV services are TiVo2
and ReplayTV3
These quite similar
services are examples of DVR services described earlier DVR services like these
have not yet made it possible to interact with the content only with how the content
is being viewed
In recent years web services like YouTube4
have become popular on the internet
and there are already examples of such services available from an ordinary TV A
service like Current TV5
allows internet users to watch videos on the web page and
put a ldquogreen lightrdquo on videos they think deserve to go on air Then the videos with
most green light votes will be broadcasted just like an ordinary TV show This is
another example of cross-media interaction
An example of an interactive television service described by Quico (Quico 2003) is
the Portuguese TV Cabo that started in 1999 The interaction in this service is more
direct than the DVR services described earlier The users can interact differently
depending on what they are currently watching not only choose what content to
watch and when to watch it One service offered is interactive football matches
where the users can choose between different camera angles or can discuss related
topics in the forum According to Quico the main usage of the forum functionality
is for cheering on favorite teams provoking supporters of other teams or
commenting the match
Another service described by Quico available to TV Cabo users is ldquoNoites
interactivasrdquo an interactive talk-show The show has two separate studios and the
viewers have the possibility to affect what is discussed in one studio there are a
number of guests commenting what people have discussed in the forum Here the
viewers can vote for the person they want to see more of in the main studio where
the host discusses with the selected guests The topics of the discussions are also
voted for by the viewers
INTERACTION
One problem concerning the interaction is that it might be difficult to use an
ordinary remote control as they are designed today to perform more complex
1httpwwwsvtsesvtjspCrosslinkjspd=42645
2 httpwwwtivocom
3httpwwwreplaytvcom
4 httpwwwyoutubecom
5 httpwwwcurrenttv
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
27
actions There are innumerable kinds of remote controls but the vast majority at
least has some kind of four-directional steering cross a selectokenter key and
most often also a number keypad In addition to these keys there are for instance
menu keys color keys contrast keys teletext keys and volume keys
Compared to the most common computer interaction tools keyboard and mouse an
ordinary TV remote control is restricted missing some of the freedom that other
tools give Even if the remote control would be equipped with some kind of
trackball this is still trickier and more difficult to handle than a mouse
Concerning the picture size and quality in general TV screens have larger screens but
poorer resolution compared to computer screens However with HDTV the picture
quality of TV screens is getting better The current development with increasingly
larger TV-screens and better resolution could make it easier to develop good user-
friendly interfaces For an interactive storyteller this means that longer texts and
larger images can be added without decreased quality
CONTEXT
People watch TV in different situations The context is an important aspect of how
people use a platform since the way a user interacts with a platform depends on the
situation The most common place in which people watch TV is probably at home
The surrounding environment is probably quite calm people watch alone or together
with family or a few friends Many families even have several TV receivers at home
so that more people can watch TV on their own The sound volume is adjustable
and it can be assumed that everybody can see the whole TV screen
On the other hand there are also an increasing number of public places where a TV
is a part of the environment One such example is the sport bar where people come
together to have a drink and perhaps watch a game of football In places where there
are many people watching TV together not everyone can control the TV Often an
employee is in charge of the remote control This person decides what channel to
show and could perhaps change the channel or turn the volume up or down if
someone asks for it
The social context of TV viewing could change services like currentTV and Kvick
described earlier could make watching TV more of a social activity When people
together (or in contest with other viewers) have the possibility to vote for what to
view or in other ways affect what is happening on the screen the viewers get more
engaged in their viewing One very successful example of user engagement is
YouTube It provides a way for common people to share their own stories in an easy
way Even though the stories are not interactive there are possibilities for people to
grade or comment a video clip so that users can see what other viewers think about
different video clips
Another aspect of TV usage is that there are very many expert users who use the TV
several hours each day The users of the other platforms discussed in this report
cover a wider range of expertise When trying to design interactive stories for
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
28
television this knowledge can be both frightening and comforting Comforting
because people use the platform so often that they will quickly get used to the new
interactive features Frightening since people might be conservative not ready to let
go of the technology that they are used to People may also have a developed sense
of quality which makes it a great challenge to design interactive stories
Yet another difference between TV and the other platforms is the common use of
sound When watching TV there are almost always some music or sound effects
present Almost the only situation in a TV show or movie when there is no sound is
when the absence of sound is the result of a conscious choice by the director to
create an effect
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
In many countries around the world television transmissions are changing from
analogue to digital In some countries the transition is almost finished while in other
countries it has not yet left the planning phase1
At the same time investigations and
research about how interactive television should be implemented is done (Fredriks-
son 2006) It is likely that in the next few years services like Digital Video Recording
will be more common An ordinary complete TV set might contain not only a TV
DVD-player and a sound system but also some kind of computer connected to the
internet
It is reasonable to assume that the viewers will get the option to somehow identify
themselves for example by having a personal user login Just like when using
computers people could have their own personal settings statistics of their viewing
etc With a feature like this commercial spots could be addressed only to persons that
have announced that they are interested in the commercial
It is possible that TV will turn more and more towards on-demand which means that
people chooses what to view and when to view it Already today with DVR services
and download of TV series via different file sharing techniques this way of watching
is not uncommon If this development continues it is imaginable that the
requirements on advertisement will be even higher than today Today it is possible to
simply change channel if the viewer does not want to see the commercial but at the
risk of missing the show when it is back on With DVR or other on-demand services
people will have even more power over what they wish to see One way for
advertisers to come around this problem is discussed by Miller (Miller 2004) In an
interactive quiz show where the remote control was used to answer the questions of
a quiz there were commercial breaks as usual After the break there were sometimes
questions about the content in the recently shown advertisements In this way a user
who wants to get the best score possible cannot afford to miss the commercials
since they could be worth important quiz points
Another possibility could be that advertisements will be so good that people actually
want to see them Already today there are TV shows showing funny commercials
1 httpwwwskaffastokabnudigitaltvasp accessed 2006-09-25
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
29
from around the world Advertisements can be seen as an own category of
entertainment
In a few years from now most people will still watch ordinary TV shows like today
news sitcoms sport documentaries and movies etc The use conditions will
probably be similar to how they are today and the main difference from today will
probably be that people have more control over what to view and when to view it
There are other possibilities though in an article on N24se1
a future with
holographic 3D-television is described According to this article within ten years a
holographic television will have replaced your coffee table For example when
watching a football match at this TV you will see miniature players made of light
running around on the TV
32 Mobile devices
There are many kinds of devices that can be described as mobile or wearable Devices
such as cell phones Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) game devices like Sony
PlayStation Portable2
(PSP) and Nintendo DS3
and other wearable media devices In
the following section mobile devices supporting interactive storytelling will be
discussed
BRIEF HISTORY
In the beginning of the 1990rsquos the usage of mobile devices started to take off
(Lacoheacutee et al 2003) According to Kotz and Gray (Kotz amp Gray 1999) mobile
devices is one of the areas within the computer industry where the growth is highest
In an article by Wright (Wright 2006) it is stated that the number of mobile devices
able to connect to the internet is increasing With this technology new opportunities
come to provide users with useful andor entertaining material
Cell phones have according to Jenkins (Jenkins 2004) changed from being just
telephones into more advanced multimedia devices able to play music and video and
with the possibility to browse web pages At the same time mobile game consoles
have developed in a similar way away from being simple game playing machines
Now devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are able to connect to the internet
and act as video and media players as well as browsers of web pages
INTERACTIVE SERVICES FOR MOBILE DEVICES
Today there are a number of services for mobile devices primarily for cell phones
There are mainly services like downloading of music pictures games video clips but
there are also a few examples of mobile television4
One example of a game ndash that is an interactive story ndash for a mobile device is the
Japanese game Mogi5
The game uses a positioning system (eg GPS) and is played by
1 httpwwwn24sedynamisktprylardid_13707277asp accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpwwwyourpspcom
3 httpwwwnintendocomchannelds
4 An example of such a service is Movio httpwwwbtplccomInnovationNewsMoviohtml
5httpwwwmogimogicom
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
30
moving around in the real world using the cell phone to collect virtual items Points
are earned by getting complete collections of specific items Items can also be traded
between players Another game of this kind using the cell phone to find virtual
objects in the real world is RayGun1
In this game the player has to move in the real
world to track down and attack (virtual) ghosts
In recent years blogging has become a popular activity Bloggers post their stories for
people to read and comment so blogging can be seen as an interactive storytelling
activity And now there are services2
to allow people to do their blogging from their
cell phone and it is likely that more services of this character will come to be
One interesting idea is presented by Wiberg (Wiberg 2004) inspired by file-sharing
networks on the internet Wiberg developed in this research project an application
for mobile devices called FolkMusic The idea was to allow users of this technology to
share the music in their mp3-player with nearby people The application provides a
list of songs available in the surrounding area and the user can choose to listen to
any song present in this list
INTERACTION
The mobile devices of interest here are the ones able to connect to the internet since
this is probably necessary to be able to utilize the interactive services available
Compared to ordinary television sets mobile devices have relatively small screens
often 2rdquo ndash 5rdquo and therefore less information can be viewed at the same time
compared to the TV set Therefore it is more difficult to read for example a web
page (Hoyoung et al 2002)
The interaction on mobile devices is often restricted to navigating in menus even if
there are examples of more mouse-like interaction solutions for mobile devices For
example the PSP has (at least) two options open for the user when browsing a
webpage One is using the steering cross to move the arrow between the links on a
page Another option is to use an analog stick similar to those often found on
laptops The latter option allows the user to interact in a way more similar to how a
conventional computer mouse is used
CONTEXT
One possible problem with mobile devices is the fact that they can be used
anywhere which of course also is their main feature The conditions when using a
mobile device can vary very much from sitting in a couch at home in a totally calm
environment to sitting on a bus filled with talking people and screaming children
Mobile devices can be used in various situations but according to Hoyoung
(Hoyoung et al 2002) people tend to use their cell phones mainly either at home or
at the office However the device and its applications must be designed with the
various conditions in mind An application must be usable even if the surroundings
are noisy or if the lighting conditions are changing
1 Read more at httpwwwgizmagcoukgo3539
2 For example httpmobilbloggse
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
31
Concerning the users of mobile devices they have a wider range of expertise than
TV users This may be due to the rapid development of the platform or because of
the fact that mobile devices have not been a part of peoplersquos lives for a long time
Therefore it cannot be assumed that as many users will learn and take advantage of
new technical improvements However since mobile devices are most often tied to
one person each user can determine for themselves whether they are interested in
using all features of their device or if they just want to use the basic functions The
fact that mobile devices are personal could be used for exciting functions such as the
FolkMusic application discussed earlier
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As many mobile devices not only can connect to the internet but also with nearby
equipment (using eg Bluetooth) it is likely that more ways of using this possibility
will arise One scenario could be the possibility to use a mobile device to ldquopick uprdquo
content from another device perhaps a computer or a TV With such a function
people would be able to change more freely from one platform to another For
example think about watching an interesting TV show but you have to go to the
bus Currently you would have to choose between missing the rest of the show and
missing the bus In a few years you may be able to synchronize a mobile device with
the TV bring your device and be able to get to the bus on time Once on the bus
you can finish watching the TV show
Another example that might give a hint of how mobile devices can be used in the
future is a scenario by Microsoft1
where a visually impaired person uses a mobile
device to control appliances like copier and microwave oven It is likely that the
future of mobile devices is as much about devices interacting with other devices as
about users interacting with the device
Lacoheacutee (Lacoheacutee et al 2003) predicts that the possibility to connect a mobile device
to the internet will be taken for granted and that this ubiquitous access will lead to
more useful applications Lacoheacutee also sees the advent of thin perhaps bendable
displays With a display the size of a credit card always connected to other devices in
the environment there are numerous possibilities for social and interactive activities
She also notes that the social use of new technology is often overlooked together
with the possibility for users to create their own applications
There is also a social aspect to consider when discussing mobile devices Nowadays
more and more people are reachable round the clock since more people have a cell
phone At the same time more people are using mp3-players or other wearable
media devices Thereby more people walk around ldquoin a bubblerdquo unaware of what is
going on around them The use of the internet seems to be turning towards more
social activities and it is not unlikely that this development will spread over to
mobile devices as well Currently there are many tools that can be used for different
kinds of social activities such as SMS phone calls and digital cameras
1 httpwwwmicrosoftcomenablebusinessfutureaspx accessed 2006-11-01
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
32
As mobile devices become increasingly advanced and possibly a great tool for
interaction with information as well as with people very interesting situations might
occur Perhaps it is like Robert Nilsson (Nilsson 2006) wrote (free translation)
Donrsquot be surprised if you in the future hear things like ldquoIrsquom sorry Irsquom late I met a hydra outside
the grocery store and as you know they can drop a unique dwarf shield May I borrow your computer
to healrdquo
33 Game consoles
Game consoles have always been used to play games and are therefore suitable for
interactive storytelling The following section will mainly be about the three main
competitors Nintendo PlayStation and Xbox So far game consoles have mostly
been used for just playing games but as we will see this seems to be changing
BRIEF HISTORY
Computer games appeared in the early 1970rsquos although some earlier attempts were
made Games like the successful Pong and Space Invaders were invented during this
period According to Herman (Herman et al 2002) during the late 70rsquos and the early
80rsquos the market flourished just to have some tough years in the mid 80rsquos Herman
claims that during the second half of the 80rsquos the computer game market set off
again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and titles such as
Super Mario Bros and Tetris During the 90rsquos and until today the market has kept
growing and with each new generation of game consoles the games have become
increasingly technologically advanced
Until a number of years ago a game console would only let you play games but now
consoles are equipped with DVD-players and can connect to the internet to provide
different services such as demo game downloads and online gaming The current
game console generation seems to take another step in this direction The PlayStation
3 for instance is not called a game console Sony describes it as a computer entertainment
system1
INTERACTIVE GAME CONSOLE SERVICES
Many of the games on these consoles are good examples of interactive digital stories
even if there are people who do not share this opinion (see the section about games
and storytelling) Even if the members of the new generation of consoles supports
connection to the internet and some allow downloading of demos or whole games
there are not that many interactive services dealing with anything else than games
This somehow seems natural since the game consoles have always been and will
probably almost be mainly about playing games
INTERACTION
The interaction possibilities have become more and more advanced The old steering
cross has been replaced (or complemented) with the more accurate analogue stick
and alternative controllers such as steering wheels step pads congas and
1 httpwwwusplaystationcomPS3defaulthtml accessed in 2006-09-20
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
33
microphones have become popular The new Nintendo Wii console is promoted
with much focus on its motion sensing wireless controls With the Wii controllers1
it
will be possible to use different equipment in the game just like you would use it in
the real world swing the controller like a tennis racket or a golf club or use the
controller to point somewhere on the screen etc The Sony EyeToy2
is another
example of an alternative interaction device The EyeToy uses a camera and
microphone to allow players to control the game by moving in front of the camera
and give commands to the game via the microphone
Console games often use a TV as the display so the development of for example
HDTV is of interest also for game consoles However as one person noted3
people
tend to sit closer to the screen than what is necessary when playing console games
CONTEXT
Game consoles are mostly played at home and in some cases at an office or in a
public place ndash for example in a game console store Some games are pure single
player games with no option for several players Other games are intended to be
played by several persons often 2-4 players In recent years several game titles have
been released such as Sing Star Buzz and Dancing Stage which can be described as
party games When playing these games the joy is almost as much about the playing
itself as about watching others play
These games have also had influence in another context of playing namely the
playersrsquo physical position This will be taken yet another step by the controls of
Nintendo Wii Before the typical playing position was probably sitting down leaning
slightly forward with the remote control in your hands With the new kinds of
controls this position will be more varying sitting standing dancing jumping
waving etc The only limits will be the imagination of the game developers and the
physical laws
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
If game consoles follow the trend in other areas they will in a few years be used for
many other things than playing games There are already are already demonstration
videos for the coming generation of game consoles where simple picture editing
applications are shown
It is possible that this kind of development within the game console industry will
lead to new ways of creating interactive stories One interesting way to present a
story inspired from the common television series format could be to allow players
to subscribe for a ldquogame seriesrdquo For instance one new chapter of the game could be
released each week much like a TV series is shown Maybe the episodes can be
designed continuously and in some way allow the players collectively to influence
which way the story takes
1 httpwiinintendocomcontrollershtml
2 httpwwweyetoycom
3 Haringkan Gulliksson personal conversation 2006-10-23
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
34
Microsoft is working on a system that will take their Xbox Live system to another
level with Live Anywhere people will not only be able to access their personal profile
from their Xbox but also from a computer or from a mobile device It will also be
possible for PC gamers to play certain cross-platform games against Xbox gamers
and there will be games available to mobile devices as well1
This is another example
of how different media platforms converge and become more similar
If the consoles continue the development towards advanced media centers and the
controls become increasingly advanced we will see new ways of interacting with
different kinds of media It is for example likely that the new Wii controls will inspire
not only game developers but also other areas of interactive digital storytelling
34 Personal computers
This section is more difficult to define exactly what it is about Are the computers
interesting per se or is it in fact the internet that is interesting A large amount of the
(interactive) content used on computers is at some point downloaded from the
internet But the possibility to connect to the internet is essential to many of the
other media platforms discussed here as well However without the personal
computer (PC) the internet would not exist at least not as it looks today Therefore
the topic of this section is the personal computer even if the internet will also be a
part of it
BRIEF HISTORY
Until a few years before the internet computers were generally quite slow bulky and
not so easy to use2
In the mid 80rsquos the Macintosh was released3
with a Graphical
User Interface and the personal computers started to become accessible to more
people Since the arrival of the World Wide Web in 1993 the development has been
rapid and there are now millions and millions of web pages (Nielsen 2006) of
which many have some more or less interactive content As computer hardware gets
better and connection bandwidth increases the services become more advanced
offering more video and audio content Services such as web based television games
online stores dictionaries radio betting educational services blogging and video
blogging are all more or less common on the internet
INTERACTIVE SERVICES
The PCs have become capable of doing more and more and in this way the
computer is more flexible than the other platforms discussed Using only a PC you
will be able to watch videos listen to radio and play more or less advanced games all
with quite good control
A very simple example of an interactive computer story is Dracularsquos riddle4
a website
where puzzles have to be solved in order to advance to the next level A level
1httpwwwxboxcomen-UScommunitynewseventse32006articlese3pressbriefing2htm
accessed 2006-11-01
2 httpenwikipediaorgwikiPersonal_computers accessed 2007-01-02
3 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_the_graphical_user_interface accessed 2007-01-02
4 httpwwwdraculasriddlecouk
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Different media platforms
35
consists of a picture where clues often as text or symbols can be found Through
these clues sometimes with help from picture editing tools and internet searches the
URL to the next level can be found The interaction is very simple a picture is
shown and to advance through the application the player needs to find out the
correct answer to the given puzzle
INTERACTION
Even if many of these services are available also for mobile devices the screen size
and resolution are likely to be superior on a PC The screen is usually smaller than a
TV screen but has a higher resolution The computer can be connected to an
external display for example a projector or a TV This is often used for
presentations when many people watch the screen
The usual tools for interaction are a keyboard and a mouse which together offer
more possibilities than for example a TV remote control There are other interaction
tools as well for example a trackball or a sketchpad Both of these could be seen as
alternatives to using the mouse
CONTEXT
PCs are now used in many different contexts including at home school office and
public places such as the library and internet cafes At work a PC is mainly used as a
tool At home it is used for instance for entertainment online shopping and
homework At public places the users are often limited to perform certain tasks For
example the library computer can often only be used to search the libraryrsquos
catalogue
Although there are now many places on the internet where people can come together
to discuss common interests or play games with each other a PC is still a single user
device The increasing use of PCs has in some sense moved many persons social life
from the real to the virtual world instead of meeting with friends physically
somewhere it is not uncommon that everyone is sitting at home by their PC seeing
each other online
A difference between TV and computers is the use of sound On a TV as mentioned
earlier sound in some way is almost always present When using sound in computer
applications the context in which the application will be used must be considered In
an office for example too many sounds can be disturbing and should be used
sparsely (Palmquist 2006)
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to predict what role the PC will have in the future since the difference
between different media decreases (Jenkins 2004) More people might in a few years
have a combined PCTV in their homes but the PC as an important office tool so
far seems unthreatened It is likely though that computers will be surrounded by
wireless or mobile devices to a larger degree than today There are wireless computer
mice and keyboards on the market today but they are still in minority
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
36
In recent years the focus for many web users has moved from taking part of content
created by companies or other institutions of some kind to taking a more active role
in creating their own web content (Jenkins 2004) Thus many users become more or
less active storytellers and it is likely that we in the future will see many new ways of
telling interactive stories
35 Other platforms
In addition to the platforms discussed above there are some other interesting
examples of how new technology has been used not necessarily to tell a story but to
offer interactivity to make something more appealing There are many other different
interactive technologies used in various ways but these three examples were chosen
in this report The different technologies used in these examples can contribute with
inspiration in the development of new ways to apply interactive storytelling
INTERACTIVE WINDOW SHOPPING
One innovative example from New York is an interactive shopping window on a
Polo Ralph Lauren store1
This window allows those who want to buy a displayed
item by tapping the window and drawing their credit card in the card reader Items
are projected onto the window and there is a thin foil enabling the touch screen
behavior In this way people are able to order displayed clothes directly from outside
the store even if the store is closed
INTERACTIVE BILLBOARD CONTEST
Another example is taken from Belgium (Epiphany 2004) where people could send
an SMS to a number displayed on an interactive billboard to enter a contest with a
chance to win a car When a person enters the contest they receive a question via
SMS The billboard shows a pinball environment and depending on whether the
person answers the question right or wrong the displayed pinball game behaves
accordingly at a correct answer the pinball game will show a winning behavior an
incorrect answer will result in a ldquotiltrdquo behavior This is an example of cross-media
interaction (mentioned in the section about interactive television)
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING TOY
In a research project by Fontjin and Mendels (Fontjin amp Mendels 2005) StoryToy is
developed and described It is a set of toys equipped with sensors and sound
designed as a farm environment with stuffed animals such as cow pig and sheep
There are three different play modes with different difficulties The free play mode is
just like any other farm toy the technology is not involved at all In the reactive play
mode the animals just react to what the child does for example picking up the cow
yields a ldquomoordquo sound from the cow The animals can also sometimes express a
desire that can be fulfilled by moving them to some appropriate place on the farm
In the story play mode there are a number of stories that can be played The different
animals can have different opinions on what to do next and depending on what
action the child takes the story takes different turns
1 httpwwwnowpubliccompolo_ralph_lauren_adds_twist_to_window_shopping accessed 2006-
11-01
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
37
4The demo application
The goal of this project was to demonstrate how a web based production can be
moved and adapted to an interactive television environment The web production
that has been changed and adapted is called Planet In Need and was originally created
by North Kingdom It is an entertaining advertising campaign site created to inform
the visitors about the physical benefits of drinking milk (and the ailments that may
occur if not drinking it) The goal of the campaign is to increase milk sales To be
able to refer to the Planet in need production in a consistent way from now on the
word site will be used The interactive television version of the campaign consists of
two different versions one more interactive and one more linear
Throughout the project the importance of the context has been emphasized To be
able to understand the difference between the two situations (sitting in front of your
computer with mouse and keyboard and sitting in your couch with a remote
control) it has been important to be able to do the demonstration in an environment
with believable conditions Therefore one important part of the project has been to
change the site so that it can be navigated using only an ordinary remote control
However since this is also a prototype to demonstrate possibilities in an interactive
television environment the application should be used with its exploratory purpose
also in mind Some things are not consistent throughout the site since they represent
different ways to solve the same problem
41 Technical solution
A number of different ways to do the simulation were considered One of the
considered options was to change the way the navigation is done but still sit by the
computer This would however much ruin the feeling of sitting in front of the TV
and thereby much of the point in doing this project would have been lost Another
considered ndash and eventually also rejected ndash option was to somehow convert the
Flash production into a DVD production and in this way come closer to the wanted
situation After a few hours of research about DVD authoring and DVD menus it
was clear that there were too many problems to solve in order to get this to work
The used solution is a combination of these alternatives using a remote control to
control the computer In this way the work with the production could be done in
Flash separate from the work to adapt a remote control to the computer To
strengthen the feeling that the situation is ldquowatching an interactive television
advertisementrdquo rather than ldquovisiting a webpagerdquo there is also an intro where a more
ordinary TV commercial spot is shown In this advertisement the user is encouraged
to ldquoPress OK to learn morerdquo This means that the user has the option to press a key
on the remote control to access more information related to the advertisement The
resolution has been adjusted to fit the TV used and issues concerning bandwidth
have been ignored
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
38
Concerning what remote control to use it was decided quite fast to use an ordinary
remote control The main keys to use are the steering cross (up down left right)
and a select key of some kind Select keys can have different labels for example Ok
Select Enter etc but the function is most often the same to choose an object In
some parts of the site also the number keys (0-9) and the four color keys (green red
yellow and blue) will be used Even though there are more advanced alternatives
such as remote controls with a trackball (mainly for computer usage) the majority of
TV users are assumed to be familiar with the kind of remote control used in this
project
Since the original files were made in Flash 8 Professional it was a natural choice to
go on using this program To be able to simulate the TV environment a personal
computer connected to a TV was used together with an infrared receiver connected
to the computerrsquos COM-port On the computer two applications called AutoHotKey
and Winlirc were used to map the signals from the remote control to the
corresponding keys on the keyboard In this way any remote control compatible with
the IR-receiver can be setup to control the Flash application During the
development of the application the computer keyboard was used for the navigation
instead of the remote control to provide a fast way to test the application
42 Planet in need
When the user makes the choice to ldquolearn morerdquo a dialogue box appears where the
user is asked to choose one of two versions of the campaign one more linear and
one more interactive These represent two different approaches to presenting the
campaign The ldquofull versionrdquo is closer to
the original web version with essentially
the same structure The ldquolight versionrdquo is
a more linear but less interactive version
These two versions were made to
investigate how to present essentially the
same content offering two different levels
of interaction It has been assumed
throughout the project that a TV viewer is
not prepared to be as active as a computer
user However at first I experienced some
kind of mental gridlock towards making
changes to the already finished site This
resulted in a version with a high degree of
interactivity perhaps too high for TV
viewers Therefore it was decided to also
do a second less interactive version
In the following sections the Planet in need
campaign site will be described First the
original web version is described in some
detail and after that the full and linear versions will be described
Figure 412 Structure of the original version
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
39
43 Original version
In the campaign there are two different sites involved one site where American
farmers in a documentary style describe the problem with their cows being abducted
by aliens This site can be found at httpwwwcowabductioncom The other site is
the already mentioned Planet in need found at httpwwwplanetinneedcom This site
tells a story about aliens who suffer from different health ailments but now they
have found a ldquomiracle elixirrdquo ndash milk ndash provided by ldquothe supreme onerdquo ndash a cow ndash on a
ldquodistant planetrdquo ndash the earth
When a user first arrives to the site there is an intro where a cow floats around in
space There is a warp effect to show how the cow is moved a huge distance The
user follows the cow and arrives to the Brittlelactica planet system (see Figure 413)
A hologram message next follows from the emperor of Brittlelactica speaking to the
citizens and describing the benefits of drinking milk After this the control is left to
the user who can choose between four different planets to visit (See also ) There is
the main planet Brittlelactica and three ldquomoonsrdquo ndash called Da Iry Mission Archives and
TV Transmissions
Figure 413 The Brittlelactica planet system serving as a main menu
Next each of the planets will be described
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
40
bull Brittlelactica ndash Choosing this planet gives the user the option to select
between four different regions of Brittlelactica There are Insomniastan (see
Figure 414) where the citizens suffer from insomnia There are PMStonia
where PMS symptoms are a problem On Papau Hairthinny the citizens have
hair related problems And finally on Cavitopia the citizens have problems
with their teeth In each of these regions the user can choose to listen to a
message from the leader of the region and to listen to a short history about
the region
Figure 414 The chancellor of Insomniastan
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
41
bull Da Iry ndash The Brittlelacticanrsquos believe that Da Iry is the name of the Supreme
one the cow When the user has chosen to go to this planet there are three
different alternatives to choose between There is the Da Iry Translator where
the users can type in questions to ask the cow Da Iry The translator uses a
parser to examine what words are included in the question In this way the
cow can answer to the questions in a general way but still give the illusion of
understanding what the user asked about For example if the user asks the
question ldquoWhat is the meaning of liferdquo the answer can be ldquoThe mysteries of
life are for Da Iry to know and for you to discover on your ownrdquo The
second alternative on this planet is the scientific extrapolation (See Figure 415)
Here the different limbs of Da Iry are examined and described in a
humoristic and naive way The third choice that can be made on this planet is
to watch a short video of how Da Iry was discovered
Figure 415 The scientific extrapolation of Da Iry Learn more about different parts of the
hovering cow
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
42
bull Mission Archives ndash When a user makes this choice an animation of the space
trip from Brittlelactica to earth is shown If the user chooses to go to the
earth they come to a map showing North America (See Figure 416)
Different coordinates are marked out showing the aliensrsquo failed attempts to
find Da Iry Different everyday objects are shown and described with focus
on their somewhat far-fetched similarities to cows
Figure 416 The Mission Archives A card showing a cat Rolling over the card with the mouse
reveals a description of the cat
bull TV Transmissions ndash In this area the user can choose between five different
video clips to watch These were shown as TV commercials during the
campaign
44 Full version
That was shortly how the original site is structured and what the user can do when
visiting the site In the following section the changes that have been made on the site
in order to adapt it to an interactive television environment will be discussed Some
changes will be described generally while others will be covered in greater detail
In this version only minor changes have been done to the two intro sequences and
no change at all in the ldquocow space flightrdquo scene In the hologram message scene (See
Figure 417) there are a number of minor changes most of them are changes that
have been applied generally on all parts of the site On the left side a menu tab to
open a side menu has been added (it does not show in the figure below) The side
menu will be described later in this section In the upper right corner a ldquoback to TVrdquo
icon has been added and the ldquogot milkrdquo logo has been removed These changes
have been applied to all parts of the site
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
43
Figure 417 Hologram message Original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
Another difference between the original and this altered version is that the possibility
to download additional material such as screensavers and desktop wallpapers has
been removed In the hologram message scene this resulted in that one button
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
44
originally used to download a screensaver was removed The last change made to this
scene is also something that goes for the whole site the text size has been increased
to be readable from a longer distance In some scenes some texts have been slightly
altered most often shortened since there otherwise would be no room for them In
this scene it felt important to be able to include the whole text since it also had an
introducing purpose To be able to do this without filling the whole screen with text
a feature often present in television was used subtexts The text was simply displayed
as subtext synchronized with the hologram video and sound
The next part of the site is the Brittlelactica planet system which can be seen as
some sort of main menu This menu including all parts of the site that are in the
same area (the Brittlelactica Choose Region menu and the four regions of
Brittlelactica) has not been changed much from the original version The only
changes that have been made are mentioned among the general changes above
The Da Iry scene also has undergone visual changes of the same kind and the part
where the user can watch a short video has not been altered at all apart from the
general changes However there was an interesting challenge concerning the asking
of questions in the Da Iry Translator part Since the keyboard input that was
originally used was not an option and since the only interaction tool at hand was a
remote control the questions had to be written in some other way A number of
different alter-natives were considered One option was letting people choose from a
number of pre-written questions This however greatly limits the number of
questions As mentioned earlier for the web production a sort of pseudo AI
question-answer processing was used It would seem a waste of resources not to
make use of this and in addition to this the alternative of choosing among questions
seemed to be the most boring although perhaps the easiest to use
Another option that was considered was to use an on-screen keyboard text input
system inspired from how input often is done in console games There are of course
differences in how these work but the idea is to have some layout of keys (often
alphabetically) and to use the control to move a marker and simply pick the letters in
the correct order If designed correctly this could be made intuitive (and actually
quite fun to use) even if it probably is not that efficient
The third and eventually chosen option was to reuse a technique used daily by many
people and simply move it from its ndash so far ndash most common platform cell phone
text input The usual TV remote control has number keys (0-9) and most often also a
four direction steering cross These controls are enough to be able to write short
texts A simple Flash implementation of such a text input application was found
(Leggett 2006) altered and used Changes that were done include the possibility to
step back and forward through the text and to be able to delete characters anywhere
in the text string One option that could improve the efficiency (James 2001) is to
use some sort of predictive text input method for example T9 However there are
licensing terms to use this method and for the purpose of this demo application the
simpler version is good enough
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
45
The last part of the Da Iry planet is the scientific extrapolation In order to be able to use
the texts from the original version an alternative solution had to be made The
different labels are still in the same place but instead of having the related text
shown by each label there is a text area beneath the cow where the text related to
each concept is shown when a word is highlighted (See Figure 418) A feature that
has been removed compared to the original version is the option to rotate the cow
This was done in order to keep the interaction as simple as possible The possibility
to rotate the cow did not contribute with any information to the story it was just a
cool feature and was therefore considered dispensable
Figure 418 The original version (left) has the ldquoRotate DA IRYrdquo option at the bottom and the
descriptive text beneath the currently selected label The full version (right) has no rotate-option and
the text is in an area beneath the cow
In the Mission Archives part of the site the space travel animation is still the same as
before However for the part where the user can explore different objects retrieved
during the attempts to find Da Iry the whole layout has been changed (See Figure
419) The original version only consists of a map with marked coordinates Clicking
a marked coordinate brings forward a card showing the object obtained at that
coordinate In the full version all cards are always present with the text in the upper
right corner describing the currently active card and an enlargement of the object
shown in the lower right corner When choosing a card by pressing the select button
the map is enlarged to show more clearly where this object was found
The last part of the site is the TV Transmissions part There are a few changes that
have been made here As in all other parts of the site the text size has been
increased In this part the possibility for the user to control the videos have been
removed it was not considered necessary to be able to pause or rewind a movie that
is not longer than perhaps 30 seconds At least not when put against the navigation
simplification that followed with removing that possibility
The size of the videos has also been increased with lower quality as a side effect At
this time it is good to point out that the new versions are prototypes in a sharp
version the videos would of course be created with the quality necessary to be able to
show them in a large enough size The video content has not been altered in any way
in this part However as we will see later in the light version there are some
possibilities to interact also with the content of the videos
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
46
Figure 419 The original version (upper) and the full version (lower)
To the full version of the site a side menu has been added (See ) In this menu the
user can access additional information about the site This was originally added to be
able to add some new information to the site without altering the original version too
much It also serves as a place where to put information which is not part of the
story but that is still related to the site For example the legal disclaimer does not
contribute to the story but it must necessarily be present somewhere This side
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
47
menu also contains a
navigation overview so that the
users can easily get an
overview of the amount of
content available on the site
Another option in the side
menu is the possibility to
rate the site Inspired by the
many different rating sys-
tems available on the inter-
net this rating system lets
the user grade the site from
one to five stars and see
examples of other recom-
mended sites The idea is to
use peoplersquos ratings to be
able to tell the users that
ldquoother people who like this site also like these sitesrdquo
The side menu also contains an option called descriptions This choice lets the user see
descriptions of a number of concepts seen in the site The need for this function is
uncertain it is more of a test to see whether such functionality could be useful After
all the application developed is supposed to be a prototype The two options not yet
described are quite straight forward ndash the add to bookmarks choice lets the user add
this site to hisher iTV bookmarks and the site information choice shows information
about the site such as what music is played or what actors are featured
45 Light version
In the light version which has not come as far in the development as the full version
ndash partly because the full version could reuse a lot more material from the original
version which was complete at the beginning of the project ndash the idea is to include
only content necessary for telling the story of this planet system One limitation in
doing this has been the fact that all content is customized for another purpose
Therefore what kind of material that was accessible also had to be considered when
deciding what should be included in the light version
The idea of this light version was to tell the central story in a quite linear way with a
limited amount of interaction possible This resulted in a quite harsh judgment of
what material to include and not Much of the material included in the original and
full version has not been included in the light version None of the material from the
Da Iry part with the translator and scientific extrapolation has for instance been
included Neither have any of the speeches available from the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version consists mainly of video material from the campaign but also
contains some of the pictures from the Mission Archives These do not contribute
Figure 420 The side menu
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
48
with any crucial content to the story but they add a fun twist to the story Also they
can be adjusted to be presented in an appropriate way unlike some of the other
material for example the books presenting a short history of the different regions of
Brittlelactica
The linear version begins with the hologram message from the emperor presented
with subtexts just as in the full version To get to the next part of the story the user
can use the remote control and simply click the select or right button If the user
never chooses to interact during the linear version it will continue anyway just like
an ordinary non-interactive advertisement The next part is a video episode number
one from the TV Transmissions
Next part of the light version is a new scene where the pictures from the Mission
Archives are presented with the related descriptions (See Figure 421) The pictures
are presented one by one each is presented a limited time but the user has the
possibility to go back and forward through the pictures To keep to the story theme
the pictures are presented with a teleporter effect so that each picture flickers in and
out from the display area In addition to this the pictures move slightly up and down
to simulate a hover effect The next parts of the light version are the four remaining
TV Transmission movies that are presented one after another
Figure 421 One of the pictures shown in the ldquoslideshowrdquo The five lamps on the side of the podium
gives an indication of the time left until the next picture is shown
In the videos of this version the user has the possibility to get more information
about different objects occurring in the video This possibility to access objects
within the content has been called intramedia annotation (Braun 2001) In this light
version of the site the possibility to access objects has been implemented in a
number of different ways but the main idea is the same In one video there are
colored dots on the objects that can be accessed The user can click the
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
The demo application
49
corresponding keys on the remote control (the red green blue or yellow button) to
get information about some object The video is then paused and the information is
shown until the user clicks any button In another video the user can press the
select key to toggle the possibility to view objects The video then continues to play
until it comes to a predefined point It then pauses and visualizes what objects in the
current scene that the user can choose This possibility can be implemented in many
various ways all with different pros and cons
In a perfect world it would be decided in advance what objects in the video should
be accessible Perhaps they could be incorporated when making the videos And
again concerning the quality of the videos throughout the light version the video
quality is not good enough to show the videos in the size needed for this purpose
Therefore it must again be pointed out that this is a prototype not a sharp version
46 Limitations of the prototype
During the work with the development of these two different versions not
everything has proceeded according to the plan One thing that had to be left
undone was the possibility for the user to navigate via the navigation overview in the
side menu It would have been a great feature to be able to use the overview as some
kind of display window the user could easily see what happened in each part of the
site and if anything seemed particularly interesting the user could simply press the
select key to go to the correct place However there are often multiple things
happening when the user chooses to leave one page to another functions are called
to resize objects load and unload movie clips etc Since the navigation overview
would have offered the users to take several steps through the site structure just
using one button press these functions had to be altered It turned out to be very
difficult to get this to work properly and it was therefore not implemented
A problem that sometimes occurs when running the application is that it crashes
This occurs when many buttons are quickly clicked in sequence the application will
then not have enough time to load all necessary material and may come to a halt
However since the remote control does not support as fast operations as the
keyboard which has been mostly used throughout the development of the
application this is not considered a serious problem On the other hand the fact that
the remote control requires a certain time to register a key-press could also be
considered to be a problem Probably this is due to the quality of the IR-receiver and
can certainly be assumed not to be a problem in a non-demonstration application
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
50
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Design guidelines
51
5 Design guidelines
During this project the practical work literature studies and thinking has lead to a
number of things to consider when moving a story from web to interactive
television Some of these things have been realized in the project while others for
different reasons have been rejected For each category discussed in this section
examples from this project have been discussed and will be concluded into a list of
things to consider As with many other lists of things to think about these ideas are
rather guidelines than actual rules
51 Interaction possibilities
Concerning the wide topic of interaction there are a number of questions to
consider preferably before the implementation has begun One has to do with what
degree of interaction the platform in question does support Different platforms
support different degrees of interaction even if these differences tend to decrease
(see the platform section) However with the development of different interaction
tools and computer games in mind it is easy to imagine that also TV viewers can
interact in a much higher degree in a number of years
For this project it was assumed that the only tool that should be used for the
interaction is an ordinary TV remote control This limits the possibility for the users
to interact with the platform compared to the original platform of the site in
question (personal computer) One concrete change that was made to match the
lowered degree of interaction was to remove the possibility for users to download
desktop wallpapers This possibility was not crucial to the story and it would have
made the navigation in some parts of the site more difficult In addition to this
wallpapers for a TV did not seem very useful at the moment
A remote control does not support exploring activities in the same way as a mouse
does It has therefore been important to set focus on the parts of the story that
directly has to do with the story In the original version there are some functions that
are only discovered if the site is used with curiosity and those functions have not
been included in the demonstration application
Another question to consider is what degree of interaction the users are interested in
This question however needs deeper investigation Anyway it can be a good idea at
least to try to consider how much the users are prepared to engage and interact with
the application in question For this project it has been assumed that TV viewers ndash
and therefore also interactive TV users ndash are less interested in interacting than
computer users are Therefore the aim has been to achieve an interaction level of this
prototype somewhere between that of TVs and computers
Two questions more closely related to the story itself concern what degree of
interaction that matches the story and the purpose of the story For the story in this
project about a planet in need the degree of interaction is fairly low compared to
many other interactive digital stories The users cannot affect the story they can only
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
52
choose what part of the story to explore and in which order etc The only place in
the story where the degree of interaction is higher is in the Da Iry Translator part
where the user can ask questions to the cow
The purpose of the story in this project is ultimately to increase milk sales According
to Dholakia (Dholakia et al 2000) engaged users tend to revisit a site more often
and thus they are exposed to the message of the advertisement for a longer time
Therefore it can be assumed that adding the possibility to interact with this
commercial spot (compared to the ordinary non-interactive TV of today) can help
increase milk sales
A brief conclusion of some things to consider concerning the interaction
possibilities
bull Think about the interaction possibilities available and try to adjust the story
accordingly
bull Think about the users what is conventional on the platform in question
what degree of interaction are they used to and what degree of interaction do
you think they are ready to deal with
bull Consider the purpose of the story ndash is it for instance an advertisement or an
entertaining story What are the users supposed to do
52 Text
An area where it was quickly discovered that changes had to be made is the
presentation of the texts of the site In order to be able to read the text when the
screen is not as close as usually is the case when sitting by the computer the text size
must be increased This in some cases also makes it necessary to edit the text since
there might not be enough room to fit all text when it is getting larger One
alternative could be to let the user scroll in texts that are too long to be displayed in
its entirety But this can in some cases mean that the wanted simplicity in the
navigation of the site must suffer In the few cases of this project where texts have
almost fit in these texts have been slightly shortened without ruining the meaning of
the text Some texts have been completely removed in order to avoid cluttering the
screen and thereby making it harder to distinguish what objects on the screen are
important
Another question always of interest when working with texts is what kind of typeface
and color to use According to Palmquist (Palmquist 2004) it is wise to choose a sans
serif typeface when the text should be read from a distance Miller (Clive Miller
2004) claims that texts that should be shown on television should be light with dark
background Both of these tips were already implemented in the original version
most text was already white or grey and most backgrounds are dark The typefaces
used on the site are mainly different members of the Helvetica typeface family
Miller (Clive Miller 2004) has a number of tips concerning other aspects of using
text than the visual It is of importance that the terminology used is comprehensible
In this case concepts such as Insomniastan Da Iry and Goondok Pods are not well-
known The texts that are part of the content are not necessarily comprehensible
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Design guidelines
53
since they depict the beliefs and opinions of the Brittlelacticans However texts
which are not part of the story content use understandable phrases such as ldquoback to
TVrdquo used to leave the site and return to the ordinary television broadcasting Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) points out that it is also important to follow platform conventions
But as was discussed earlier this might not always be such a good idea The
argument was that if conventions always are followed people are reminded of the
platform they are currently using and thereby their immersion is possibly broken
When it comes to make decisions concerning text on a site this list gives a hint of
what to consider
bull Have in mind the context (contexts) where the application will be used and
make sure that texts are readable Two important parts of text readability is
text size and typeface
bull Try to use descriptive and self-explanatory texts However if possible try to
incorporate the story also into the navigation
53 Navigation
One part of the project that consumed quite a lot of time was to enable the user to
change the navigation from mouse to key-based All parts of the site can be
described in terms of menus the site is essentially about selecting different objects in
order to navigate and to watch the information presented It has been a tedious task
just to decide what menu item the user will go to when pressing for example the left
button on the remote control
Koumlltringer (Koumlltringer et al 2005) argues that ldquoevery navigation operation should
also be reversiblerdquo However since the selectable menu items on the site in this
project are often spread all over the screen and not always in straight lines confusing
situations might occur if this tip was strictly followed If clicking left could always be
undone by clicking right directly after some of the menus on the site could become
almost impossible to use Instead the approach to designing the menus (See Figure
522) has been to make them as intuitive or practical as possible pressing the right
button should select the item that is closest to the right of the currently selected item
etc
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
54
Figure 522 The navigation is not always obvious each type of line shows where the user comes when
clicking the corresponding button For instance clicking right when positioned at the ldquoEarsrdquo menu
item moves the selection to the ldquoDa Ironrdquo item
Another detail to think about when designing user interfaces perhaps especially
important when no mouse is present is to rdquorestrict movement to where the userrsquos
attention is wantedrdquo (Clive Miller 2004) In this site there are often objects moving
independently of the user One such example is found in the Brittlelactica planet
system menu where the planets are rotating all over the screen This is tightly
connected to the systemrsquos ability to display its current status According to Nielsen
(Nielsen 2005) it is important for the user to be able to see what state the system is
currently in In this case this means that the user should always be able to figure out
which menu item is currently selected In order to make this clear the currently
selected item glows and is lighter than the other items There are also two glowing
dots beside the selected item to provide something that makes it easier to distinguish
the active item from the inactive ones
Also concerning the navigation on the site it is important to set limits such that the
users are only able to select relevant items For example when displaying a question
box to ask the user to choose which version of the site to watch it is important that
the user only can select relevant objects That is the user should not be able to
continue navigating in the menu that is beneath the popup question box (Clive
Miller 2004)
Another topic to discuss about the navigation is time-critical user response Miller
(Clive Miller 2004) claims that this should be avoided In this production there are
no places where the user has to make a time-critical decision In some places the user
is shown a short video clip and the site then automatically moves on In fact in the
light version this is used all of the time the user has the option to move back or
forward in the story but if the user is passive the story moves on by itself
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Design guidelines
55
The last thing discussed here about the navigation is the use of colors Color is a
good way to identify relationships between objects (Clive Miller 2004) In the light
version the four colored buttons on the remote control are used for the intramedia
annotation described earlier To access the object marked in red click the red button
on the remote control Miller also argues that it is important to always have all four
colors present even if they are not used This should be done to provide a
consistency in the order the colors appear partly to enable also color-blind users to
use the system without trouble
Here follows a number of guidelines to how to handle the navigation
bull When designing the menus consider the interaction tool that will be used
For example when using a four-directional steering cross on a remote
control as the main tool try to make the menu navigation intuitive Strive for
linear or grid-placed menu items avoid seemingly randomly placed menu
items
bull Design the menus such that invalid selections cannot be made Menu objects
that have no meaningful purpose at the part of the site in question should
not be selectable
bull Make it very clear which menu item is currently selected If a user loses focus
of the screen heshe should be able to get back on track again just by
looking on the screen
54 Sound
As has already been discussed in the platforms section there are differences in how
sound should be used for television and computers A question of interest is how a
TV commercial without music is experienced In the light version this is not such a
big issue since most of the content is video where sound is already included
However in the picture slide show part of the light version and in many parts of the
full version there is not much sound There are the ldquobliprdquo sounds that come from
selecting items in the menu and in some areas there are background ldquospace soundsrdquo
Intuitively it seems to me that an almost silent TV commercial would feel strange
and uncomfortable Even in DVD menus there is often some kind of music ndash
perhaps the theme of the movie is repeatedly played ndash and therefore the TV audience
can be assumed to be used to the presence of music when sitting in front of the TV
This is a topic where it would have been interesting to dig deeper but the topic is
somewhat out of scope for this project The only advice that is given with this
limited amount of background information is
bull Consider what platform the story is developed for and how sound is
commonly used on this platform
55 Advertising specific guidelines
The production discussed throughout this project is an advertisement It is therefore
also interesting to think about design guidelines specifically for this purpose The
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
56
questions that have been asked throughout this report will here be discussed or even
answered
One interesting question is concerning how to attract the usersrsquo attention without
them feeling disturbed In this case the advertising video serves this purpose with
the option to ldquolearn morerdquo In this way each user can decide on their own whether
they are interested in examining the interactive content more closely One could
think of many different ways of presenting the interactive story to the users One
alternative would be only to use the light version instead of the ldquoordinaryrdquo video
This would however be done with a risk of annoying the TV viewers that are not
interested in interacting with the advertisement
The second question asked earlier was if there is a good way to present the advertised
product such that the users do not think about it as an advertisement the users
should be immersed and entertained by the story This could perhaps be described as
some kind of ldquoadvertising transparencyrdquo Making an advertisement entertaining can
be a good way When I see a humoristic commercial spot on TV I often realize after
a while that I do not know what the advertisement was about but my curiosity then
makes me go to find out what product the advertisement was about
One desirable property of the increased possibility to interact with a commercial spot
is the possibility to include some way for the users to order the advertised product
directly when they see the advertisement One question to consider is if there is a
good way to encourage users to take this step and in that case also how it should be
done The product advertised in this project milk is not often bought online and
this possibility has therefore not been demonstrated in the demonstration
application However it can be assumed that users who feel entertained and are
engaged in interaction with an advertisement are more likely to buy a product than
users who are bored and inactive
So when working with an advertising story try to consider these guidelines
bull Allow the users to choose for themselves whether they are interested in
interacting or not Do not force the users to interact
bull To be able to attract any users the advertisement cannot just be a message
about some product it has to be a message that in some way engages or
entertains the users This I imagine goes for all kinds of advertisement
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Discussion
57
6Discussion
This project has been about redesigning a finished product rather than designing
something new When making changes the original design idea had to be considered
in order not to ruin some crucial part of the story This was more difficult than
expected there is almost a fear of making changes leading to a redesigned site that is
very similar to the original It took quite a while before changes were made other
than text size and position Another problem was the fact that all material at hand
was configured for a specific purpose and when making changes it also had to be
considered what material was available and how it could be used
The demo application that has been developed in this project aims to show how a
story can be moved from one platform to another The development could continue
for a long time there are many ways this platform change can be achieved The
prototype however gives some examples of difficulties and opportunities that come
with moving from one platform to another
One thing that has to be decided is what kind of functionality that should be
provided by the hardware and what possibilities the application designers have For
instance will the bookmarking functionality be built into the hardware or is it
something that the application developers will deal with And concerning the
possibility to select objects within video material will the hardware have support for
such activities Or is that a task for the application developers
Another problem that was unexpected was the challenge to fit in all material on the
screen Before the work started I thought that the larger screen would provide more
space to put in new information However the fact that all text sizes had to be
increased made it obvious that this was not the case Instead I had less space to
work with in the new iTV version than in the original web version
Considering the future of interactive storytelling and iTV one question that still has
to be answered is whether people are ready to participate in an interactive story via
television It is likely that the possibilities for interactive storytelling in the television
environment will increase but throughout this project people have seemed
somewhat suspicious towards the possibility to interact Perhaps the possibility to
access additional information is enough at the moment The demo application
developed in this project consists of two versions with different levels of interaction
It is likely that there is a better solution somewhere in between the full version
probably has a too high degree of interaction to satisfy the users Perhaps the linear
has a degree of interaction which is closer to how much the viewers are prepared to
interact
How will storytelling change as the technology changes At least for TV viewers the
freedom will increase meaning that the possibility to choose what to view and when
to view it will be more common This will lead to higher demands on advertising
since no one voluntarily watches something that they do not like The importance for
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
58
advertisers to create appealing stories will increase It is likely that new technology
will make way for new ways to interact and thus also changes the possibilities for
storytelling One such example is the StoryToy application described earlier It is
likely that we will see more applications like this with more advanced technology and
not necessarily as childrenrsquos toys Another possibility that seems likely to appear
within a few years is some kind of social mobile storytelling application Since more
and more applications seem to have a social purpose and with the success of many
online role playing games it seems likely that we soon will see a combination of these
concepts a social mobile role playing game application
For future projects an important part of the planning and the design process will be
to decide what platforms the application will be used on It will also be necessary to
decide what degree of interaction will be offered what material will be needed in the
production and what the purpose of the application is With a little bit of planning
the amount of work needed to get the same story to work in different platforms may
not be too much
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
Acknowledgements
59
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at North Kingdom for the chance to perform this
project with them A special thanks to my supervisor at North Kingdom David
Eriksson for all his support and ideas concerning the project I would also like to
thank my supervisor at Umearing University Haringkan Gulliksson for all his support in
practical questions as well as all his ideas regarding the report
Finally thanks also to Liselotte Lundqvist and examensjobbnu that first introduced
me to this project
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
60
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
References
61
References
Adams Ernest W (2005) Interactive Narratives Revisited Lecture presented at the 2005
Game Developersrsquo Conference
httpwwwdesignersnotebookcomLecturesInteractive_Narratives_Revisit
interactive_narratives_revisithtm accessed 2006-11-12
Braun Norbert (2001) Interactive Approach for Digital Video Based Storytelling In
Proceedings of the 8th
International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics
Visualization and Computer Vision
Carey John (1997) Interactive Television Trials and Marketplace Experiences In Multimedia
Tools and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Netherlands Volume 5 pp 207-
216
Coleridge Samuel Taylor (1817) Biographia Literaria Excerpt from the book chapter
XIV available at httpwwwenglishupennedu~mgamerEtextsbiographiahtml
accessed 2006-12-04
Dholakia Ruby Roy Zhao Miao Dholakia Nikhilesh and Fortin David R (2000)
Interactivity and Revisits to Websites A Theoretical Framework RITIM Working Paper
httpritimcbaurieduwp2001wpdone3Interactivitypdf accessed 2006-09-04
Epiphany Shibuya (2004) Ford Fiesta ad campaign combines interactive billboards with SMS
httpwwwsmartmobscomarchive20040722ford_fiesta_ad_html accessed
2006-11-01
Fontijn W Mendels P (2005) StoryToy the interactive storytelling toy In The Second
International Workshop on Gaming Applications in Pervasive Computing Environments at
Pervasive 2005 Munich
Fredriksson Linus (2006) Interaktiva digital-TV-tjaumlnster Radio- och TV-verket
Haninge Kommun ISBN 91-85229-13-X
Glassner Andrew (2001) Interactive Storytelling Stories Games and People In Proceedings of
the First International Conference on Virtual Storytelling Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 2197 Springer-Verlag Pp 51-60
Hecker Chris (2000) Physics in Computer Games In Communications of the ACM Volume
43(7) pp 34-37
Herman Leonard Horwitz Jer Kent Steve Miller Skyler (2002) The History of Video
Games httpwwwgamespotcomgamespotfeaturesvideohovindexhtml
accessed 2006-12-14
Hoyoung Kim Jinwoo Kim Yeonsoo Lee Minhee Chae Youngwan Choi (2002)
An Empirical Study of the Use Contexts and Usability Problems in Mobile Internet In
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
David Moumlrtsell
62
Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35)
Hawaii
James Christina L Reischel Kelly M (2001) Text Input for Mobile Devices Comparing
Model Prediction to Actual Performance In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems New York ACM pp 365-371
Jenkins Henry (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence In International Journal of
Cultural Studies Sage Publications London Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi
Volume 7(1) pp 33-43
Jensen Jens F (2004) Interactive Television New Genres New Format New Content In
Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment pp 89-96
Juul Jesper (2001) Games telling Stories ndash A brief note on games and narratives In The
international journal of computer game research volume 1 issue 1
httpgamestudiesorg0101juul-gts accessed 2006-12-04
Kotz David Gray Robert S (1999) Mobile agents and the future of the Internet In ACM
Operating Systems Review Volume 33(3) pp 7ndash13
Koumlltringer Thomas Tomitsch Martin Kappel Karin Kalbeck Daniel Grechenig
Thomas (2005) Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus In Extended
Abstracts CHI 2005 ACM Press pp 1565-1568
Lacoheacutee H Wakeford N Pearson I (2003) A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a
View of its Future In BT Technology Journal Volume 21(3) pp 203-211
Miller Carolyn Handler (2004) Digital Storytelling A creatorrsquos guide to interactive
entertainment Focal Press United States of America
Miller Clive (2004) Interactive Television Services Content Guidelines Royal national
Institute of the Blind
httpwwwtvhelporgukaccessInteractive20Content20Guidelinespdf
accessed 2006-12-20
Murray Janet H (2005) The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies
Delivered as a preface to keynote talk at DiGRA 2005 Vancouver Canada
Murray Janet H (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts
Nielsen Jacob (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics
httpwwwuseitcompapersheuristicheuristic_listhtml accessed 2006-12-21
Nielsen Jacob (2006) 100 Million Websites httpwwwuseitcomalertboxweb-
growthhtml accessed 2006-11-29
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field
References
63
Nilsson Robert (2006) Spel i framtiden
httpgameplayersefocus_textphppub_id=3494 published March 20 2006
accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2004) Om att skriva
httpwwwcsumuse~lenapomattskrivapdf accessed 2006-12-20
Palmquist Lena (2006) Ljud i MDI Lecture keynotes for a lecture in Human-
Computer- Interaction
httpwwwcsumusekurserKOGB06HT06utdelatF4slidespdf accessed
2006-12-14
Paul Nora Fiebich Christina (2005) The Elements of Digital Storytelling
httpwwwinmsumneduelementsindexphp accessed 2006-12-13
Peinardo Federico Gervaacutes Pablo (2004) Transferring Game Mastering Laws to Interactive
Digital Storytelling In 2nd
International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment Pp 7ndash13
Quico Ceacutelia (2003) Are communication services the killer applications for Interactive TV or ldquoI
left my wife because I am in love with the TV setrdquo In Proceedings of the 2003 European
Conference on Interactive Television From Viewers to Actors (April 2-4 Brighton UK)
University of Brighton 99-107
Spool Jared M (1996) Branding and Usability
httpwwwuiecomarticlesbranding_usability accessed 2006-12-12
Stewart James (1999) Interactive television at home Television meets the Internet In Cathy
Toscan and Jens Jensen eds Television of the Future ndash or The future of Television Media amp
Cultural Studies 1 Aalborg University Press Aalborg pp 232-233
Wegert Tessa (2003) Advergaming Catches On
httpwwwclickzcomshowPagehtmlpage=2239071 accessed 2006-12-15
Wiberg Mikael (2004) FolkMusic A Mobile Peer-to-Peer Entertainment System In
Proceedings of the 37th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Wright Adam [adamwrightipsos-insightcom] (2006) Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival
the PC As Worldrsquos Dominant Internet Platform httpwwwipsos-
nacomnewspressreleasecfmid=3049 accessed 2006-11-01
Source code
Leggett Richard (2006) Flash Lite 20 Inline TextField
httprichardleggettcoukblogindexphp20060221flash_lite_2_0_inline_text
field