In the storyboard session I worked with the students on their visual ideas. The entries were primarily judged on the written submission and the verbal expressiveness in the recording itself. Within the workshop I helped students realize the visual possibilities, keeping in mind that in this context, the audio needed to play the starring role over the visuals. We emphasized complementing the atmosphere and feelings that the words and narration conveyed. At the same time, the visual story, told through animation, could reveal a new understanding to the audience of what they were trying to say about the location. In this way, abstract concepts such as friendship, cultural heritage, mystery and addiction found its own visual “voice.” As the students began to realize the new dimension that animation could bring to the story they were telling, they developed quite sophisticated concepts within the storyboards. Many subsequently provided their own artwork to be used in the final piece.

Over a two-month period, beginning with the storyboard sessions, I worked with the students, and designated parent or teacher mentors, to complete the ten animations, all approximately two minutes in length. My partner at Ideaforia, Edward Bakst, and I created animatics from the storyboards, guiding the process of converting images into a time-based form. We either used the student-provided artwork or created new artwork to animate the finished pieces.

Please view some of the completed British Council Shorts in the Animation section of Projects.

Interactivity’s Ambiguity

The word “interactivity” does its part to spread ambiguity, allowing all sorts of mediocre examples to be counted as story interaction. When posing as participation, simply turning a book’s page can be considered. When behaving like a reaction then gasping in fright at a horror flick can be included. If treated as engagement then warning the screen’s witless soon-to-be-victim not to enter the creepy cellar is all it takes to be in the midst of an “interactive story”. But each of these is an insufficient and lackluster ambassador for the term’s potential.

When not being ill-defined, interactivity can be downright misleading. Simply experiencing a story is said to generate an inner dialogue that qualifies as interaction. But the ongoing process of debating and concluding what is happening in the story is a lopsided operation. It’s completely internalized. We are interacting with ourself, so to speak, not with the story, which plows steadfastly forward impervious to the discussion chattering away in our head. The betweenness that ‘inter’ suggests is an illusion because nothing is being exchanged or shared. Interactivity seems to be misrepresenting itself here, but the failing is not with the concept of dialogue. Instead, it suggests an air of unwillingness on the side of story.

Interactivity finds clarity when it is compared to a conversation. In this most useful definition, both parties are expected to listen to each other, think about what the other has said, and respond (Crawford, 2003). But when it comes to conversation, story strikes a condescending attitude. Feeling wholly superior and self-assured in its skin, it is not interested in the suggestions, opinions or advice of others. It just wants to show off.

Story’s Culpability

Of course, we’ve known for some time that story is an egotist. Its structure has a history of being effective and fruitful. Enormous success has reassured it that its contents are perfect, and should therefore be kept pristine. Story has enjoyed widespread adoration as a soloist, so it’s understandable that with the spotlight comes a healthy dose of conceit. Rightfully, it should be proud as there’s no doubt it’s a flourishing art form. But it’s also a stage hog. And when asked to be an ensemble player, it can’t help but be fussy and temperamental. Clearly, if interactive story is behaving badly, then the principal offender is story.

Interactivity is kept at bay by the firmly entrenched regimen of storytelling. It spans the entire process, from creating a story all the way through to telling it. Minding all the intricate details and managing how they intertwine would be a nerve-wracking and self-defeating task if some of those details were unknown or unpredictable. Storytelling has kept its sanity by being exclusive, associating only with a very private company of elements, and keeping a tight leash on the whole proceedings. Interactivity can’t help but find it all unbearably anal retentive.

Story’s Rigidity

This firmly established version of story is rife with controlling measures.

For example, story often presents itself as a journey down a path. A path, with its linear quality, has all the maneuverability of a single lane road. No two elements share the same space and therefore one thing must follow another, like a stream of cars behind a farm tractor or numbers on a number line. The confinement of a line naturally creates order, a highly esteemed quality in a story. Yet the single file that a line imposes makes it difficult to imagine its contents in anything but an order.

The problem is not that a story ends up being a line, it’s that it starts off as one. A line’s order promotes simplicity, well-suited to a story’s conclusion by showing us exactly how we got there. But to create a story with a line in mind is to construct with rigidity; story elements have to clench together in a sequence to produce the order that makes a linear path. It’s hard for interactivity to find a meaningful way to cut in without infringing on the line’s integrity. The same organizing features that bring coherence by the end of a story are simply ill-equipped at the beginning to think of input as anything but an unwanted disruption.

The path metaphor also highlights another restricting feature. A story is a path that has already been laid out and to experience it one needs only to travel its course. It’s trickier to grasp what on earth the problem could be with this feature, but essentially, interactivity is looking for ways to have a choice. If the path is already laid out, there’s no opportunity to head in another direction or do something spontaneous. Typically, a story is pre-prepared so everything can go exactly as planned. You don’t get to make or determine anything along the way. From interactivity’s point of view it’s a little like an arranged marriage in disguise; there’s something nagging about getting to choose your future spouse as long as you choose the one that’s been chosen for you. And interactivity would like to choose for itself.

Story’s Need for Story

The main reason that interactivity is so stifled is because the part of storytelling that it has access to is, by its very nature, finished. Storytelling is basically done in two stages: first, an author creates the story; and second, a reader experiences what the author has made. Books, films and plays typically observe this principle.

To make a story interactive, only the reader’s side of the equation is asked to give interactivity some role in storytelling. To bestow this function a story that has already been authored has little choice but to somehow unfinish itself. It either makes some of its parts go missing or at least allows them to be rearranged. The contribution that interactivity is left to make is largely defined by the voids to be filled or the tolerance of the pieces to fit together in different ways. Both give interactivity something to do, per se, but they sadly shortchange its forte.

So why doesn’t story offer the author’s side of the equation for interactivity? Well, for starters, the author’s side doesn’t feel like an interaction between the story and the reader. If the story isn’t finished then it doesn’t exist yet, in which case it really boils down to an interaction between the reader and the author. The story is presumably nowhere in sight, so that leaves us asking “how do we know we’re in the middle of story interaction if we don’t have one to work with?” Despite all the headaches it’s causing, this is why the reader’s side of the equation is used. It may be a wonky explanation, but we just can’t imagine this new configuration without our precious, recognizable story.

So as the one largely responsible for the deadlock, it would seem that the onus is on story to find a way to embrace its partner. Perhaps if it had a better grasp of the nitty-gritty of interactivity, story’s course of action would be clearer.

Can We Get Story to Behave?

Despite how much simpler it would make things, interactivity is not a tool or weapon to just add to one’s arsenal. Unlike a young man being given a sword that can transform him into a warrior, one can’t obtain interactivity to be interactive. Which is also to say that it is not a state, or condition, in the way that something can be solid, orange or spicy.

From a fundamental standpoint, interactivity is a very specific kind of behavior. And it takes a minimum of two entities—whomever or whatever they may be—to make the interaction happen. Both need to behave in the specific way that brings the interaction about, which includes constantly listening, thinking, and responding to each other in a meaningful way. The key to interactivity is this behavior between individuals: to be interactive is to be in the midst of it, or to be capable of it.

So the question is, is story capable?

On the one hand, story can pretend to be one of these entities and exhibit this desired behavior. When a story’s parts are removed or their order scrambled, it can be pressed into needing interaction. Story essentially needs the other entity to fill in the missing parts or unscramble its contents. So can’t we assume that by mixing up the parts even more story’s inflexibility will eventually be undetectable, or even canceled out entirely?

Well, no. Because on the other hand, the fully-formed story that we’ve thrust into this role has no real capacity for interaction. It can’t truly engage in the required behavior because it is not equipped to behave at all. That would be counter-intuitive. It has settled into a static state for good reason. The state preserves all of its pieces in their necessary order, conveniently maintaining their composition for proper viewing by the reader.

Our contorted efforts to make it interactive are just a way of adding elaborate extra steps to the viewing process. It gives the reader some illusion of ‘sharing’ and ‘exchanging’ with the story, but it is simply a means of returning it to its completed state. All we’ve really done is made the story into a puzzle (Adams, 1999), whose superficial behavior consists of giving guidance on how to assemble, modify or reconstruct it in its own image—a pretty picture getting the help it needs to put itself together. It’s not quite the interactive “conversation” we were looking for; the scope of the discussion will be a one-topic endeavor, like trying to talk with a very self-centered person. Which sounds a little like we’re back where we started.

The Real Culprit

Our static story is failing miserably. We seem to have exhausted all the angles and this story remains infuriatingly unhelpful. Why is it being so bullheaded?

Before we point the finger in the wrong direction, this may be a good time to pull our heads out of the sand. Let’s wipe the buildup from our eyes, get a breath of fresh air and take another look at the situation. The truly stubborn culprit is staring us square in the face. The most obtrusive obstacle to story being interactive is a grossly mistaken expectation on our part—those of us responsible for defining what an “interactive story” is and coming up with wonky explanations to justify our own inflexibility and shortsightedness.

All along we’ve been asking story to behave and to somehow be capable of interacting. We treat it as its own entity so that “interactive story” can be an interaction between this comfortable story and us, the reader. We’ve proclaimed this story as the one that must work, but now we’ve seen that what we clutch to our heart as the dear friend we know and love and grew up with is not designed to converse with us.

Our static story is perfect the way it is—thousands of years of success have proved that. The reason it’s being disagreeable is because we’re dragging it, kicking and screaming and quite against its will, to take on new responsibilities it is simply unqualified to manage. Ultimately we have to ask ourselves, when we pressure this story into interacting are we just clinging to the pleasure of the finished piece we’ve always enjoyed as a reader? Are we unable to relinquish the familiar magic because we can’t imagine an alternative? Do we have an incurable case of tunnel vision or is it possible to see a completely new and undiscovered story equation?

We know we need a story something in some capacity. If interactivity is a kind of conversation between two individuals, and story can’t be one of those individuals, then where exactly does it fit in? Where is the magical place for story within this so-called conversation?

Interactivity’s Lively Nature…

When two individuals interact there is a distinguishing effect that is the hallmark of interaction. They set in motion a kind of live process. It takes the individuals behaving in a specific way to bring it into existence, and interacting keeps it going. Once the interaction ends, the effect—the live process—is over. The whole objective of interaction is to achieve this process. When we look at an example of interactivity, such as a conversation, we can see this in action. The objective is to be conversing. A conversation is the live process of conversing. A negotiation is the live process of negotiating. Each of these is a specific form of interactivity.

The magical place where story belongs—what it should be—is this live process that embodies interactivity. Like conversing or negotiating or playing a game it should be its own form of interactivity. But we already know our static story is pretty inflexible. Is it possible to convert it in some way, or use any part of it for this so-called ‘live process’?

If we look at interactivity in slow motion we discover something that sheds some light on a possible recourse. Interacting—the live process in motion—is about creating and experiencing something all at the same time. Or, authoring and reading, or authoring and viewing, at the same time. One could look at conversing as talking and listening. And negotiating as being in the midst of negotiating and witnessing the negotiation all at once. Playing a game can be thought of simultaneously playing it and watching it being played every moment. Interaction is very fluid, so it’s not typically broken apart in such a way. This is interactivity: a lively, ongoing process where individuals simultaneously create and experience something.

…Applied to Story’s Static State

Story, as we’ve seen, is typically created and experienced in two stages that don’t coincide. It’s authored in one, and read or viewed in the other. Story’s rigidity, inflexibility, and preference for a static state are all because it literally is the momentary pause between these two stages. Having just been completed, story has left the creation stage. But it has not yet been pulled into the experiencing stage. It stands in a kind of peripheral existence—alone, perfect, pristine and motionless.

The incompatibility we have on our hands can be phrased another way if we use a far-flung analogy. Story’s static state can be thought of as potential energy and interactivity’s live process as kinetic. Pairing these together creates a contradiction: expecting movement out of something unmoving. We have just as much difficulty getting “interactive story” working in this capacity as we do driving while stationary, jumping while suspended or dancing while paused. Story needs to match the kinetic energy that interactivity epitomizes.

On the plus side, the movement is there. Story’s active parts can be reinstated by incorporating the entire storytelling process, which includes authoring and reading/viewing it.

On the down side, it’s not without a major hitch. Recall that interactivity fluidly combines these two parts into one continuous process, but storytelling has them broken into completely separate stages: we create the story, it exists in its static form, and then we experience the story. It’s not so easy to just merge them all together. By design, the kind of activity required to create a story is wholly different than that used to experience it. Storytelling as we’ve been practicing it is cousin to many where these separate phases simply aren’t meant to co-exist: you don’t cook a casserole and eat it at the same time, or sew an outfit while wearing it, or skydive by simultaneously going up in a plane and dropping from the sky. The first part is intended to be completed before the second part can do its thing. The fact that these stages need to be separate makes the entire storytelling process as we know it unsuitable for interactivity.

It’s no wonder interactive story has had trouble getting along.

A New Kind of Story

There’s simply no other choice. We have to be willing to let go and allow our coddled story to evolve. You can do it, just cut those apron strings. If it’s going to be its own form of interactivity it needs to be able to shed its old ways and completely transform. No more self-centered attitude and solo spotlight. No more uncompromising tactics for organizing itself like the confining line, the exclusive set of elements or the pathway set in stone. No more disjoint between creating and experiencing it. Story has to leave behind just about everything. The only thing that it carries over from the shadow of its former self is that intrinsic quality that sets it apart as story. And it’s our responsibility to be clear about what that is—and isn’t.

So what is this new “story” then? As a fledgling word it doesn’t yet have a full definition. It’ll have to rely on interactivity as a starting point, and look to existing versions of interactivity to understand itself better and work out the details. If a conversation is the live process of conversing, then this new story is the live process of…storying.

Storying is a kinetic something that isn’t really a proper word. But it has the semblance of a meaning that suggests it is distinct—and quite promising. It just requires a stand-in until a suitably relevant term can be selected. ‘Interactive story’ seems a perfect candidate. If it has truly ironed out its differences, and the two words can be in tune with each other’s forte to the point of behaving as one, well, then, it may even be ideal.

References
Adams, Ernest (1999). “Three Problems for Interactive Storytellers”. Gamasutra (December, 1999). http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/026_Three_Problems/026_three_problems.htm
Crawford, Chris (2002). The Art of Interactive Design: a euphonious and illuminating guide to building successful software. San Francisco: No Starch Press (2002).

This uncertainty directly impacts the entire design of an interactive story. Traditionally, a particular hero is chosen for a particular set of circumstances, because it is the exact kind of situation the hero needs to find himself in to test his mettle. It emphasizes his flaws, challenges his strengths and forces him to question who he is, what he believes in, and ultimately what is most important to him. By comparison, the Hero in a storyworld is the user—a virtual unknown whose inner qualities and values are yet to be uncovered. The situation doesn’t know what kind of mettle it’s working with. This section looks at how the user steps into the shoes of the Hero and how the Main World might put their flaws, strengths and beliefs to the test.

Interactivity plays a unique role in shaping the expressive abilities of this form of storytelling. As authors of storyworlds, students are challenged to incorporate the user’s potential choices and decisions in the design process. In lieu of pointing the user towards a predestined journey and outcome, students have to consider other means for collaborating with their main character, and find ways to create the “magnetism”, or “dramatic glue”, that attracts and guides narrative possibilities within the architecture of the story world.

Student exercises and projects are designed to free their reliance on a linear story by playing with different story configurations and devising mechanisms for generating dramatic possibilities. The course includes a history of interactive narrative, from traditional, non-digital versions to current computer-based examples.

Student images from the Multiple Storyline exercise.

The emotions, the ethical principles and the range of values involved can be very complex, but the moral truth is simple. It is the author’s statement about the way the world works: given these characters, their respective values, their changing circumstances and the choices they make as they try to deal with their situation, this is how things are fated to end up. The author’s statement is as much about the inner qualities of each character as it is about the state of the world in which they exist. The story is destined to reveal the moral truth about these characters and their world. And, in effect, make the ending inevitable.

This section is about the role of human character in the storyworld and how behavior is generated, elicited and incorporated into the mechanics for drama. From a larger perspective, it considers what the certainty of the author’s statement looks like when faced with an environment that defies inevitability. In an interactive story is there such a thing as “moral truth” playing the puppeteer?

In teaching computer animation, I emphasize a solid grounding in its history so that students appreciate our evolution up to this point. My students may grumble on occasion that I dive a little too deeply into the soul of the computer, revealing its technical underbelly so we can see why we are forced to do things a certain way. But I believe that students should grasp what the computer can and can’t do, and remind them that people are behind the design of both the underlying architecture and software programs. Although good software is designed to accommodate the most common approaches to certain tasks, and better software allows customization of the process for our particular needs, neither truly caters to our individuality. We should never let the software’s design completely define or constrain our thinking.

In both classes, the role of the animator as the designer and actor is emphasized. Discussion of computer-related topics, concepts and techniques are covered in general, software-agnostic terms. Lab time then caters the discussion to the specific software we are using and what creative approaches we can take to bring our ideas to life.

Images of Peter Foldes and his film "Hunger" (1974).

The interactive nature of the storyworld incorporates the user’s emotions, beliefs and motivations into the dramatic experience, offering the auteur an unprecedented canvas of creative possibilities to experiment with. The process of shaping this new dramatic experience opens the doors to a new critical language.

Images from Kurosawa’s film “Seven Samurai” (1954), and UPA Studio’s “Gerald McBoing-Boing” (1950).

These drawing classes are designed specifically for animators. Built on a traditional figure drawing approach, they expand into a more thorough observation and analysis of the figure in motion.

In practice, the course concentrates on two important aspects:
1) understanding and drawing the figure as individual components within the sequence of motion, and
2) capturing the desired motion through the transformation of the figure over the series of frames.

Although these sound like the same thing, they are not—one highlights the figure itself, each frame within the sequence; the other focuses on the essence of the motion over time, what happens between the drawn frames.

For both “Drawing for Animation” classes, I use the fancier term “biomechanics” as this is appropriate for the approach. In class we compare the human structure to various animal structures, and vice versa, and explore weight distribution and balance in each. We examine how the design of a body describes the kind of movement it is, or is not, capable of, and how the rules governing the motion embedded within that structure could be effectively manipulated, re-envisioned or even broken for the purpose of animation.

The art of character animation is in giving the essence of life based on this fundamental knowledge; creating a living, breathing character with its own style, behavior and idiosyncrasies, completely believable within the fictitious world and potentially unlike any that exist in the real world.

The other side of the site is a blog about Interactive Story. Over the years I’ve developed a very definite idea of what I’d like to see in a story that is essentially co-authored as it is happening. I’m interested in how the mechanisms of drama set it apart from games, and how narrative, visual language and interactivity come together to create a storyworld. The blog gives me a more conspicuous place to not only discuss these topics but to also demonstrate them in action.

If you are interested in contacting me, please feel free to send me an email.

About Me

I’ve been in the computer games industry for over twelve years now, starting out as an animator and storyboard artist. I have covered the spectrum from production team member to creative director, and have worn both artistic and technical hats.

After working on several educational games that incorporated proprietary technologies, I became involved in the specific areas of Games for Education, Social Impact Games and Serious Games. I was curious how technologies being developed enhanced the educational process, and how they might be used to communicate concepts and change people’s perspectives about the world around them.

I held a brief post at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as founding director of the GameLab, where I defined and promoted the vision for the lab according to these areas of focus. Also while in Singapore, I co-founded a company with Edward Bakst called Ideaforia, which advocated the view of technology-based interactivity as a form of creative expression. These two experiences sparked my curiosity about whether stories and interactivity could play nicely together, and the larger question of how to represent, or mimic, human behavior through computer programming.

From an academic standpoint, I have designed, developed and taught both traditional and computer animation courses, as well as a course in interactive storytelling. I have conducted workshops on the “media senses” which explore the way different forms of media communicate and work their magic, with an emphasis on interactivity as a new “language” for expression. I have shared some of my ideas about Interactive Storytelling through conference presentations in parts of Asia and Europe.

My background is in drawing, film theory, and computer graphics, having studied all three at Carnegie Mellon University. My work as an independent Designer/Director and a full time member of game development teams has given me the opportunity to work with many great clients over the years, including Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Disney Online, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, Mattell, Nokia/Sony Activision, Backbone Entertainment, Imaginengine, Gizmo6 and Wildbrain Studios.

Pixie Hollow is an online gaming and social environment based on the Disney Fairies franchise and set amidst the backdrop of Tinker Bell’s world. Visitors experience life within the Hollow by creating their own fairy or sparrowman and flying around to different locations in search of activities to complete and other inhabitants to befriend.

The magnitude of content within Pixie Hollow is considerable; Disney constantly adds fresh inventory of items to be found, won, collected or purchased. I was one of many artists working on rough designs and final Flash-based artwork for home decorations, articles of clothing, accessories, and badges. Items I designed include the School Supplies, Bolt and Gear Collection, Countryside Collection, Winter Wonderland presents, Icy Furniture and Icy Decorations in Harmony’s Home Collections Shop; and clothing pieces based on the outfits worn by Clank, Bobble, Fawn and Dessa.

Preschool Time Online helps preschoolers get a head start on their kindergarten skills through learning-based activities. Each week a new theme provides the framework for different puzzles and games that can be played with favorite Playhouse Channel characters such as Winnie the Pooh, JoJo, Mickey Mouse and Handy Manny. Although I contributed several animated sequences as needed for the project, I primarily worked on the activity series that features Special Agent Oso, providing sketches for game concepts and layouts, and preparing 3D art assets for final development in Flash.

In this piece, the students wanted to convey the spirit of their close friendship through special moments captured in photos at their favorite place to hang out together. The four girls took the pictures used in the film, and I animated their cartoon likenesses moving from one framed photo location to another.

The students’ powerful concept for this piece emphasized the unending trap of addiction to gambling and their concern for this disturbing social problem. For the visual style of the animation, I referred closely to the storyboard drawings which seemed to capture the faceless citizen, one of many caught up in a mindless, robotic hope that drives them, day after day, to bet away their financial stability.

The visual concept for this entry played the hustle and bustle of city life against the quiet serene of the nature preserve. The storyboards were minimal so I fleshed out the design and animation based on a few key concepts that the students shared during our storyboarding workshop.

For this particular entry, the students drew an ambitious and highly detailed storyboard reflecting their specific take on which foods to savor and stalls to visit within the Maxwell Food Center. Their choices were tied together with the running theme of what to experience “before you rest in peace”. The students provided all of their own artwork which they hand drew and colored in Photoshop. I used the storyboards as layout reference for composing each scene and then provided the motion graphics to transition between them.

The mission of the Art Arcade was to build awareness for a variety of games situated outside of the commercial mainstream. The program showcased a handful of independent titles that exposed the Singapore general public to less familiar genres, such as serious games, and offered inspiration to budding game designers and artists.

The completed Art Arcade was installed for two and half months on the children’s floor of the Woodlands Regional Library, one of Singapore’s largest branches. The final program included five games: “TeamUp” and “Rocket Bowl” both by Large Animal Games, “Gish” by ChronicLogic, “N” by Metanet Software, and Space Station Sim by Vision Videogames. We worked with the library to connect aspects of each game with reading material within the library system. The program proved to be a huge success, appealing equally to boys and girls and drawing positive responses from parents.

Along with curating the games showcase, I created the logo and graphics for the library space. I worked with a local software company, Paradise Isles, to develop a game portal that ran on each of the Art Arcade computers. The portal provided access to play the games and contained screens with information about each title and developer along with the suggested reading material.

The project was developed as a partnership between the GameLab at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, where I was serving as the lab’s director, and Ideaforia, the locally-based commercial company in which I was a partner. Ideaforia provided the concept development and creative direction for the project while the GameLab contributed the programming and image recognition expertise.

As the hands-on component to the Blink! exhibition, “Be A City Planner” helped young Singaporeans appreciate the challenges of a rapidly growing nation. Kids learned about the basic needs of a growing city—such as housing, industry, health and safety, and education—and experimented with how much to allocate to each to maintain an adequate balance. A large Singapore-shaped floor map served as an empty canvas for placing foam blocks of different colors, shapes and sizes. The blocks represented various city structures including hospitals, schools, residential buildings and factories, each of which corresponded to one of the city’s basic needs. A ceiling camera above the map fed the layout into a nearby computer that ran a simplified urban simulation program. The software program took the configuration of blocks on the floor map and recreated the layout as an onscreen virtual city, complete with images of buildings that resembled actual structures in Singapore. Visitors trying different layouts on the floor map were able to receive feedback as to whether their configuration achieved desirable living conditions. Based on city planning criteria defined within the software program, the city planner could not only find out how well or how poorly the city they created met the needs of the population within it, but also see the impact if adjustments were made.

The option to work independently with the map and building blocks or in combination with the urban simulation software made the exhibit accessible to a wide public audience. The museum also worked closely with educators to facilitate use of the exhibit, allowing them to focus on those aspects of city planning that were relevant to a class’s course content and age group.

Besides serving as director of the project, I also designed and developed the urban simulation software program. Wong Chee Kien Gabriyel of NTU’s GameLab wrote the image recognition software.

This project highlighted the challenges of transferring the educational experience of an entire learning environment from one configuration to another. The new product was different not only in size and content real estate (the screen size was 160×160 pixels), but the mode of interaction and the way the content was delivered created a substantial shift in the user experience and possible learning outcomes.

During the early development process I acted as a liaison between the artists and the development team to ensure the art and animation functioned within the proprietary format. I worked on the design of the interface, layouts of the book and vowel pages, animation of book sequences and animated gags of clickable objects.