For school we need to create an interactive content application. It needs to feature an interactive narrative and have an intuitive design. Basically this means no buttons at all to navigate. We were supplied with 11 points to keep in mind when designing the ICA (Interactive Content Application).

When researching these points, I didn’t find any information at all about it! Therefor I made a shortlist with explanation of these 11 points. These will help you creating your own ICA.

1. Don’t see only the possible choices a user can make, but also the consequences of those choices. What will happen if the user makes a choice? What does the user experience when he makes a choice and what does he experience between choices?
2. What role does the user have. Who is he or she, what qualities of character has he / she. etc. etc. When you got this right, it’ll be easier to make up different choices for the user that doesn’t involve too difficult or to dull things.
3. What do we see on screen? Describe the look-and-feel of the ICA. Show this with a mood-board for example. When designing the look-and-feel you get some extra idea’s on the story in most cases.
4. Does the system has some artificial intelligence. Does the system know, learn, remember, calculate. In short, what capabilities has the system and how is it going to respond to the behavior of a user.
5. Which story lines are possible for the user to go through? Are there any variations in or between story lines? Keep in mind that the more story lines you’ll have, the better interactivity becomes in mine opinion.
6. How can a user navigate through the application? What does he need to do to get somewhere. Where are the hot spots and how do they react? Keep in mind that it’s good to keep this as intuitive as possible. For example, a door is a hot spot to get to another location.
7. Is there going to be any sound? What will a user hear? If possible provide some examples here to make your point clear to others.
8. How do the different plot lines evolve? Is there any tension at all? Are there also periods of rest or highlights? Keep this short but understandable, most people don’t like complex plots at all.
9. Describe a scene from your application in pseudo code. For an example check the wikipedia page about pseudo code.
10. Show mind maps, storyboards and the moodboards you made for the application. A mindmap will show how the idea is developed and a storyboard will make youre story a bit more understandable.
11. Add some background information on the story and ICA. Also add all the sources you’ve used during the creation of the app.

Well that’s it! Good luck! If you’ve any extra idea’s just drop a comment.

Guerrilla marketing is synonym to original idea’s in my point of view. They are always a bit offensive in some way or just plain bold! Wikipedia says the following about Guerrilla marketing:

The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional; potentially interactive; and consumers are targeted in unexpected places. The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral. The term was coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing. The term has since entered the popular vocabulary and marketing textbooks.

Guerrilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places, street giveaways of products, PR stunts, any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources. More innovative approaches to Guerrilla marketing now utilize cutting edge mobile digital technologies to really engage the consumer and create a memorable brand experience.

That does sound nice doesn’t it! Today I found out a list of 25 great guerrilla marketing video’s from different kind of brands operating in different kind of markets. My You’ll find my favorite one below. The whole list is waiting for you right here.

This is my favorite from the list. Why? Well, you needed to get a ticket (pay for it really) to get to see this ad =)

Interactive Narratives. Maybe you heard about it, maybe you didn’t. Therefor I’ll explain my view on this. An interactive narrative is telling a story in an interactive way. Not linear like a movie or book, but non-linear where the user makes all the choices to influence the story.

This seems hard to create, but in reality it’s just offering different choices and  relate those to other choices that all together create a story. Every time you follow the story it’s tolled in a different way, at least when you don’t make the same choices over and over again.

When I was studying I found that there are a few people that did important research on interactive narratives. Two of them are Meadows and Crawford. They both have different views on the matter however. I disagree and agree with both of them. It’s wise to study both matters and then make your decisions for your own interactive narrative.

(more…)

Last few days I redesigned my blog a little. Well redesigned is a big word for it =). I inverted it from a black look to a clean whiter look. This time I wanted to get a most minimalistic look possible. Of course it can be downsized even more, but this is the minimal I like.

I also managed to fix my RSS bug. This blogs feed only showed titles even when the “Full Text” option was turned on. It seems it was a bad upload for some RSS template files! I also attached a Google Buzz stream at the right side of the screen. I’m posting more there then here, so this way nobody misses anything.

I also updated my YouTube channel. It was standard before and now dipped it in a similar style as the blog. Hope you like it, I’m certainly very pleased with it!

I was just going through all the items in my Portfolio which I save in a hard copy format. Most of the time it are brochures and magazines. This one was kind off forgotten however. I just found it again and it made me smile! It’s one of the little things I’m really proud of.

Last year at university we needed to analyse a dutch brand and design the results in a brand related booklet.
I choose FatBoy and the result of the analysis can be found below! Love to know what you think about it.

» BrandAnalysis FatBoy