Core I n te raction Na r rative: Social Overlay Metaphor Summary: This interaction narrative was created as the start point for storyboarding. It is ordered as a series of beats. This was informed in turn by exhaustive design research made available and dialogues between me and the project manager. The narrative is grounded in current technology to ensure it considers early feasibility. This ensures that in the feasibility phase, the dialogue is over “can we build it?” rather than “can it be built?” The emphasis on “core” is to indicate that this is the central metaphor for the product. Beat: Kate enters an immersive social network environment, somewhat PicLens like. It's like arriving at a new world. The visualization is organic and meaningful. You're able to see the "god" view of the community - communities being born, adapting (merge, split), dying - based on the simple rules for John Conway’s Game of Life. Beat: Communities are represented by "LEGO" like or organic building block symbols representing both identification and which communities can "fit together". Basic primitive shape can be combined to create more sophisticated shapes as communities blend or separate - completely new shapes might emerge. Beat: You're able to see communities with the most intense communities glow brighter, like a satellite image. The strongest sentiments coloured from red to black.This is the base view on which different zooms levels, overlays and actions are possible, much like Google maps with overlays of infra-red heat signatures, population demographics etc The goal is to create objects to think with, like CabSpotting and other Stamen designs Beat: As we zoom we tap into progressively more activity. As we choose overlays, we see different perspectives (or p.o.v's) for a given level. Actions are possible for a given overlay. Manipulating the zoom and overlay levers allow us to narrow it down to the area of interest. The actions allow us to interact with the community and content. Beat: Kate use natural gestures via physical computing to exert smooth, continuous control, "piloting down" to the desired level, making the experience tactile ( for example using a light sensor which lets you "palm lower or higher" or a force feedback joystick ) Beat: Searching for a community, for example Inventory Optimisation eliminates communities on the map leaving related communities. Kate selects the brightest community. Beat: Entering the community shows a "flow meter" of all conversations. New, intense conversations are larger have thicker, brighter flows, like power flows inside cables. Older, stored conversations dull with age and are positioned lower in the flow meter. Selecting a 1
Beat = Interaction