Social media, SEO, marketing and writingInteractive Structure: Creating Order Out Of Chaos
Whether or not you are aware of it, our world is structured into a series of shapes and patterns and sounds that trigger pleasure in us. This systematic organization is part of our intuitive nature—it allows us to structure sensory information into consciousness, thought, and language. It’s the way we humans are designed.
In the interactive world, design structure is more than just notes scribbled on a napkin or a complex flowchart depicting sequential scenes of an application in rich detail. Interactive design structure fulfills two important duties: it defines the navigational boundaries of the user experience and it is the framework that holds all the creative elements of an interactive work together.
You are now ready to make some pretty important decisions that will have a serious impact on the ability of the user to navigate your interactive application. As an interactive writer, it is your job to identify the user’s perceived range of action—keeping in mind that “what the user can do” directly corresponds with the “rules and pathways you create.”
For example, an interactive environment such as Myst [the groundbreaking first-person point of view adventure game created by Robyn and Rand Miller], which has a wide range and depth of choice, may be perceived as more interactive than a conditional branching system with limited choices. This is true, in part, because of the navigation methodology built into the system—a methodology that emphasizes the program’s “critical objective” over a “critical path” mentality. A critical objective is a centralized aim, goal, or action whereby the end user’s overall path of discovery stresses a “means to an end,” rather than fulfilling an immediate task. Key elements within such an application are revealed over time as the user navigates through the application. A critical path is a single correct path a user must follow to successfully complete an application. This is a procedural approach to completing a task.
The distinction between a critical objective and a critical path is significant. Many players confess that what they like best about playing Myst is “exploring the environment.” Finishing the game is much less important.
In her essay “The Garden of Merging Paths,” Rebecca Solnit writes, “Much recent attention to interactive media proposes that it makes the passive viewer become actively engaged. What is interesting about these products is that they map out a number of choices, but the choices are all pre-selected…that is, the user cannot do anything or go anywhere that the creator has not planned; as usual with computer programs, one must stay on the path and off the grass (by which analogy hackers do get off the path, a subversive success that keeps them in the park). We could chart the game as a series of forks in the road, in which each choice sets up another array of choices, but the sum total of choices has already been made. Thus the audience becomes the user, a figure who resembles a rat in a conceptual version of a laboratory maze. The audience-user is not literally passive; he is engaged in making choices, but the choices do not necessarily represent freedom, nor does his activity represent thinking.”
Douglas Gayeton, who has worked on high-profile projects such as Plug In (AOL), Waking Hours (Boxtop/IXL), Johnny Mnemonic (Sony ImageSoft), and Vanishing Point (MSN/Sunshine Digital), claims, “The geography of an interactive space is an illusion…it’s a directed experience. You only need to art direct (or write) what the viewer will see. If a location is too richly composed and features too many objects, the viewer will expect to be able to interact with everything. When she finds that she can’t, she will realize she’s hit a ‘wall’ in the interactive world.”
In his book The Complete Wargames Handbook, author James F. Dunnigan cautions, “Keep in mind that a computer does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do. Unlike people (some people, anyway), you can’t just tell a computer what you want done and expect your request to be carried out. Computers require explicit instructions. These are called computer programs, or computer software. The terms ‘program’ and ‘software’ are often used interchangeably.”
