User participation in a transmedia story can take many forms. These questions will help clarify what user participation for a transmedia project will be like. Will the transmedia narrative focus on individual participation? Shared participation? What benefit will individual versus shared participation provide? How will the transmedia narrative encourage sharedContinue Reading
User engagement is an essential part of any transmedia project. Designing that engagement requires the transmedia project team to make a number of key decisions. These key questions should be answered at the appropriate stage of the transmedia design process. What level of user engagement does the transmedia narrative seekContinue Reading
The designer of a transmedia narrative should be prepared to answer a series of key questions about the project being developed. The answers to these questions, along with the process laid out in this blog, will help with the complex task of designing a transmedia story. Does the proposed transmediaContinue Reading
Cognitive maps are the result of a type of mental processing in which a user acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about things of interest in their environment. When used in the navigation of transmedia narratives, cognitive maps allow the “mind’s eye” to visualize the relative location of andContinue Reading
The designer of a transmedia narrative needs to design with an awareness of the entire information field that the user will be in so the narrative can cut through the informational clutter. Every narrative unit and call-to-action must have a clearly identified message the design wants to communicate. That intendedContinue Reading
When designing calls-to-action, designers need to consider the impact of these jumps on the user’s ability to both navigate the narrative and understand its meaning. Among the questions that the designer should address are how to manage the impact of jumps between art forms like (Dena, 2007): Representative arts andContinue Reading
Most transmedia narratives engage vision and hearing but few engage all five senses because of the current technological limitations. As noted in the discussion of location-dependent narratives, all of the senses can be engaged by putting the user into a physical location. Other techniques have been used (e.g. sending outContinue Reading
Engaging a user at an emotional level (affective participation) can be extremely effective in keeping that user involved with the transmedia narrative. Users who are emotionally invested in a story are likely to be loyal fans. The emotional hook for a user may come from within the story itself. AnContinue Reading
The transmedia designer should be aiming for active participation across all elements of the transmedia narrative in order to sustain a high level of user engagement. Active participation increases the users’ incentive to migrate across the media and platforms and reduce the friction associated with that migration. The degree ofContinue Reading
At the scene/sequence level media selection involves matching individual scenes and sequences to the most appropriate media. The detailed storyboard should indicate the medium used for each scene. Translating information across media can present transmedia designers with signification challenges. For example, visual language – the tight integration of images, shapes,Continue Reading