Hi I am jonathan belisle. I did Wuxia which raised 70k on kickstarter with 300 backers. !I’m here to share the story, my design principles and vision.!

Don’t forget to watch the trailer on wuxia.ca

!!

I am empoyering Changemakers with Play,

Poetry, Organizational Creativity & Transmedia

Storytelling, Sensemaking, Service Design, UX, UI, IXD & Visual Thinking.

Sensemaker & Experience Architect

I am a partner and Chief Experience Architect at

We enable business to tap into the potential of the Internet of Things using Storytelling and Experience Design.

Design principle no.1

Calm technology is a type of information technology where the interaction between the technology and its user is designed to occur in the user’s periphery rather than constantly at the center of attention. Information from the technology smoothly shifts to the user’s attention when needed but otherwise stays calmly in the user’s periphery. !Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown describe calm technology as "that which informs but doesn't demand our focus or attention." [1] !The use of calm technology is paired with ubiquitous computing as a way to minimize the perceptible invasiveness of computers in everyday life.

The idea of !Calm Computing

Metaphor 1

Design principle no.2!

Usage gives meaning

Nostalgia trumps newness

Design principle no.3!

Albert Einstein - 1896

I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.

Transmedia is a lens thru which I can envision a better world.I created my own compass to navigate every ideas or concepts that

entered Wuxia's StoryWorld.!

Wuxia’s adventures depict the effects of climate change on human behaviour and the unexpected directions humanity might take once the transition from the Information Age to

the Age of Sensor is complete. !!

This projection into a different yet not so distant future sharpens our awareness of our own reality and how we can

affect it.!!

The story also gives parents an in as conscious actors in their children’s search for meaning and pleasure. !

!Major global issues addressed by Wuxia include water,

children, climate change, and the disappearance of cultures and languages.

VOICE RECOGNITION: PHONETIC AND SEMANTIC !Our goal is for the soundtracks to respond to word choices and the rhythm and tone of the voice telling the story. We do realize however that the circumstances of storytime can be precarious, and the functioning of the app will be bound up with factors like the parent’s ability to generate the specific sounds linked to the story. The potential of this function is very exciting but will require many hours of adjustment and test readings with children who yell or cry. !!BALANCING IMMERSION AND INTERACTION !The experience will call on a variety of skills and intelligence types that will require a delicate calibration of immersion and interaction. Since the Tonalli is a musical instrument that will come without an instruction book, we will need to test its functions and find out how children react to its “magic powers.” !!PREVENTING TECHNOLOGY DEPENDENCE IN CHILDREN !One of the main goals of the project is to promote closer and more collaborative parent–child relationships, with a technological education component also planned. A way must be found to get children interested and excited without tempting them to spend too much time playing with the app. One possibility would be to have it shut down for 24 hours if it used for too long or inappropriately.

RISKS AND CHALLENGES

WHAT IS THE PRODUCT ?!!THE WUXIA’S TONALLI APPLICATION!PUTTING THE READER IN THE STORY

The iPad app is not just a game: it is an exact replica of the Tonalli discovered by Oremia and Wuxia. It is the secret passage that allows young readers to enter the world of Wuxia the Fox and join the two heroes in their quest.!!Like the Tonalli, the app functions as a mysterious musical instrument with magical powers (influenced by cycles of the moon, and the climate of where you’re using it), opening the way to new stories and interactive elements, such as !!1. Different soundtracks and sound effects that react to specific words or

the rhythm and tone of the voice telling the story. The Reading affects the Soundtrack in real-time. No Lecture is exactly the same experience.

2. “Forgotten” sounds of nature and symbols associated with them !

3. New audiovisual scenes activated by combinations of specific sounds and gestures!!

4. An Augmented Reality Storytelling Engine that displays complementary interactive audio-visual elements above the book when using the iPad rear camera and physical objects (Masks, Printed Symbols in the Illustrated Book, Street Signs-Graffitis, Wood Tiles). The app will also be a companion to walk into the story via augmented programmable environments powered by ioTHEATRE.

5. Icons and audiovisual extras that appear in the iPad app when the storyteller wears a mask

This is the actual Lunar Stone !that you will discover in the iPad application.

What will happen when all ice on earth will melt ?

Whales will stop singing and the human ability to dream will be lost.

This is Aleika the Nagual Rabbit one of 64 archetypal characters that will explore an ever expanding imaginary storyworld directly connected to Real-

Time events on Earth.

Why create a book that connects to a board game that can be both augmented with an iPad app ? Why not simply create an Interactive Book

for Ipad ?!!First the main intention behind the storytelling experience of Wuxia is to teach children how to avoid technological enslavement and to learn creative and

disruptive ways to use / control it.!!I didn't like to see my young daugther play long hours on the iPad and slowly loose the interest of playing outside. I didn't want kids to become addicts of the iPad (nothing as worse as TV) and most games proposed in the app Store

were promoting such dependance in the way their game mechanics were designed. !

Secondly, I wanted to encourage my Daugther to appreciate Slow and Contemplative Lecture because I observed that she would invent stories and ways to tell stories faster and with more imagination. I really liked the

idea of using the iPad as a tool to promote the contemplative lecture of a physical book. As a parent it was reminding some experience of lecture I had in my youth where a music album would be playing in the background and let me

know when to turn the page. !And also, it is known that, from birth to 8 years old, children discover the world mostly thru role-play and gestural interactions until they fully

develop a structured language. They use their hands to interpret reality and express what they feel in physical interactions with the environments

and objects that surrounds them. !The symbology associated to the manipulation of physical objects was

fascinating to me and I found it more exciting than to create new interactions on an iPad. In fact, I wanted that the iPad app could connect to that experience

of the child growth and adapt to it. !Finally, a book and a boardgame also work without electricity :)

ioTHEATRE!Wuxia first spin off. I had the idea to create interactive

projections in physical space that wouldn’t isolate users from each other. The projections would react to various external stimuli and human behaviors. SAGA decided to develop a

platform to enable everyone to create programmable environments.

!

This is the first Storytelling engine for programmable environments

and it ’s launching in October 2014.

Kickstarting: 13 lessons1. CrowdFunding contains the word Crowd & Funding. People that go on Kickstarter look for pre-order opportunities mostly

targeting products that are in the prototype phase but you can also use Kickstarter to raise awareness about your project.

2. We chose a 30 days campaign instead of 60 days. Think about focusing solely on your campaign for 30 days. Don’t work on other projects like I had to do. Or have some allies making the clerical work involved like calling back all those journalists and follow up on passionate fans.

3. Facebook works but mostly bring influence. We had 147,000 views on some illustrations of Wuxia but none of them gave a donation. We tried the Boost Feature and nothing really happened. Your best option is to explore all the degrees of your network and the one of your friends/fans. Interest in visuals isn’t a sale yet. Time your communications with your audience availability and online network activity. Prepare your analytics in Advance to Overcome the obstacle of High Traffic. When your communications are jammed your thinking becomes clouded.

4. PR - Talk to your ambassadors 2-3 months in advance. Explain them how critical the first 5 days of your campaign will be. The 5 first days are where most money is made. Remember that you will loose momentum after this if you didn’t attracted the right amount and types of backers. Some backers are really not networked and you can’t expect everyone to share the great news about your project. Be careful sending too much reminders these days.

5. Reach for bloggers that connects with your issues, themes, intentions. Let them express their POV and let them present your work to your audience. Every articles written by a blogger brought us donations. Mom bloggers were more networked and had a special connection to our idea.

6. PR - Prepare your backstories material in advance. Don’t give the same material to everyone. Give unique parnaphelia to avoid spreading similar content in the same network. Make your ambassadors shine.

7. A lot of People didn’t understand the principle of Kickstarter. A lot of people in my network asked about equity. Prepare to educate everyone and make time to do so. Or find ambassadors that have an educated network and a good knowledge of the time required to engage audiences.

8. We funded the project with 300 people. But the awareness of the project grew 300%. We got showcased on CBS. We are not a typical Success. It was a very stressful experience.

9. When we passed the 5 days mark we had raised around 20k. It was a great moment and a great feeling but we knew that the Math were against us. Normally you need to be fully funded after 5-7 days. We had to ask for higher donation by creating special category of donators. WE DID NOT USE ANY GAMIFIED OR STORIFIED FAN ENGAGEMENT TACTICS. A lot of good friends and Kickstarter Connaisseur didn’t give because the Odds were against us. When people give money there is often a link with how likely a project will be funded. If there is a risk a project might not get funded the whole vibe of the community change.

10. Make an awesome video that showcase your idea, your process, your intention, your personal energy. Put great music in it. Have a good narration. Video sharing is great and it is what it got us on CBC and in Future of Storytelling showcase because it is inspirational and moving to see someone building their dream. GENDER OF THE NARRATOR AND PRODUCT READINESS ARE KEY MOTIVATIONS.

11. Be prepared to share your Intentions, your Process and you Work in Progress. Have your Website ready, In languages that your audience and ambassadors understand, Prepare your Q&A. Manage your Kickstarter fans in a more personal way than you do in Social Networks. True Love waits but a kickstarted campaign is short-lived. Think about the possibility of failure early on and prepare to relaunch. It’s a learning experience from the beginning to the end. People want to feel entitled and part of your success.

12.Be prepared to loose your original team once the whole thing becomes real. When money comes in the whole logistics change and some team dynamics do not work anymore. Let go. The Inspirational Force that drives a project from Concept to Product is an ensemble of Decisions. Make sure you are not doing it for the Money but remember that your initial team might react differently after the Money is secured and a Delivery Date is presented to the Backers.

13.You have to believe in your dream. People will call you a poet, a dreamer, an anti-technologist, a crazy maker. Make sure you believe in your dream and learn how to make other feel they are part of it.

Upcoming @ wuxia.ca

Reach me on twitter @wuxia