Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In “Agneta & Frida: Merging web and narrative,?” Persson, Höök and
Sjölinder use inspiration from film theory to design characters for a narrative
interface.
NI is humanistic AI
As you might imagine, this highly divergent list of influences (as well as mul-
tiple understandings and definitions of the concept of narrative) has led to a
healthy foment in the field. While it is not unusual for AI researchers to draw
from a wide variety of other fields for inspiration, it is unusual for those fields
to be largely humanistic. We believe this is a special source of interest for NI: it
is a field where not only scientific but also humanist notions of experience and
humanity fruitfully inform technological conceptions.
The lay of the land
Drawing on a diverse range of influences, researchers have (often indepen-
dently) explored a wide variety of topics relevant to NI. In the process, several
common themes have emerged. At the end of each theme description is a list
of papers which relate to that theme.
Narrative interfaces
Several researchers in the field of HCI argue that narrative should be used as a
basis for human-computer interfaces (Don 1990, Laurel 1991). If humans often
make sense of the world by assimilating it to narrative, then it makes sense to
design our systems so as to allow people to use their well-honed narrative skills
in interpreting these systems. For example, Don (Don 1990) borrows concepts
from the oral storytelling tradition to organize the interface for a multimedia
knowledge base. Specifically, she describes three properties of oral storytelling
that can guide interface design: storytellers adapt the story to the reactions of
the audience, information such as names and lists are embedded within the
storyline so that the audience experiences this information as events unfold-
ing in time, and characters with predictable traits are used to prime expecta-
tions. Laurel (Laurel 1991) uses the analytic categories of Aristotelian dramatic
theory (i.e. spectacle, song, diction, thought, character and plot) to organize
interface design.
