Transformation through Interactive Narrative Design

Interactive digital narratives harness the unique power of player interaction as a catalyst for engaging and
emotionally resonant experiences. The TIND project aimed at answering the question of “how to design
impactful interactive narratives?” and “how to teach impactful narrative design?”. Both share one answer: As
designer or teacher you have to create a connection with your audience. For the design part, this can be a
connection through the theme, the aesthetics, or characters, or the role of the player / interactor. Similarly,
when teaching, it is important to establish a meaningful connection with the students and between the
students and a given topic. In a series of different educational forms (minor, courses, seminars, workshops)
Christian connected psychological, pedagogical and design thinking concepts to achieve this goal. On the
research side of this project, Christian conducted several studies to evaluate the impact of potentially
transformative artefacts. His study on Adventures with Anxiety (AwA) of 450 participants, mainly from the
HKU, demonstrates that even a short experience of 25 minutes can already lead to profound insights. In
AwA, interactors embody the personified role of anxiety – a little wolf – and learn about the nature of anxiety
and how to make peace with this inner voice. In another study, Roth collaborated with two Dutch universities
and showed that the story containing meaningful interactivity leads to better learning compared to the
version without such user agency. The main finding of this post-doc is that transformation through interactive
narratives should not be understood as immediately life changing. Instead, it should be seen as the start of a
transformative journey based on new insights, new perspectives plus the openness and motivation to learn
more about a topic. Real change takes time

Within TIND, Christian Roth studies the training of interactive narrative designers with the goal of developing teaching methods and learning tools for artists and designers to enable the creation of more effective artefacts.
Interactive Narrative Design (IND) is a complex and challenging interdisciplinary field introducing new affordances in technique and user-experience. This requires practice-based research for further development of the educational format, demonstrating its potential while identifying and overcoming common learners’ challenges. This project aims to develop a framework for the design and evaluation of meaningful interactive narrative experiences that effectively stimulate a variety of cognitive and emotional responses such as reflection, insight, understanding, and potential behavior change. It provides tools, methods and activities to enable aspiring or practicing narrative designers through an interdisciplinary approach, including game design, immersive theatre, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and the learning sciences.
HKU education means to prepare students for success in the creative industries and IND plays an important role for current and future jobs in education, arts and entertainment. IND has the potential to create an emotional impact and spark transformative change by offering agency, defined as the ability to influence narrative progression and outcomes in a meaningful way. This enables interactors to feel the weight of their own choices and their consequences, to explore different perspectives, and to more thoroughly understand complex multi-stakeholder issues, which could have significant impact on the success of emerging artistic, and learning applications.
The research project is directly embedded in the curriculum of the HKU school Games & Interaction with annual educational offerings such as the Minor Interactive Narrative Design (MIND) and HKU wide broad seminars. Course evaluation and literature research will be used to create new and adjusted training for different HKU schools and the industry. Outcomes will be shared via an interactive website and events.