Feature: Narrative vs Control in the Online Story World

How much control should users be able to take over the system they are using? Within HCI, the challenge is usually to give control of technology to users; be it through accessible design, or, more generally, by making paths clear and choices apparent.

But the question becomes more complex when considered in the context of learning, when the users are students. Students are traditionally guided in their formal learning: directed by a teacher, or steered through a course of study prepared by people with goals for the recipients of the material. In other words, some autonomy is traded for the insights of someone more experienced. Yet, user control can increase the learning possible. Offering choice improves motivation for some learners, and may benefit others by providing a range of modes in which to work. Handing over the pace of learning to the learner - equipping them with the chance to pause and replay as often as is useful - is a major value of interactive learning environments.

If this picture were not complex enough, the "Narrative and Interactive Learning Environments" conference (NILE) series, adds one more element to the mix: narrative. It is an ingredient that sits at odds with ILEs, since in its most recognisable forms, such as the movies, soap operas, or novels, narrative is non-interactive.

Narrative has enormous value in education; it provides coherence. The cognitive process of assimilating information can be characterised as the telling of a tale that incorporates both what is already known and what is to be added, assigning a plausible combination of cause and effect. This can be aided by an external narrative that makes these connections clearer, as good interface designers know.

In some cases, then, the constructing of stories is an educational end in itself. At NILE 2004, Megan Davis of the University of Hertfordshire presented her work treating autism in children, showing the system she is building to increase the competence of those whose narrative functions are impaired. Another talk in this line concerned the "StoriesAbout" project, developed by Chris McKillop of the Robert Gordon University, which enables art and design students to share and comment on stories about the assessment processes they have experienced. Her goal is to encourage reflection and provide an opportunity for learning about learning.

A further presentation that involved students making stories was Judy Robertson's description of her work at the University of Edinburgh, with Judith Good of the University of New Mexico, on an authoring tool for educational purposes. The tool is to be suitable for children to use to make their own narrative computer games, without having to learn to code. She is basing her design on research with young people, a teacher and a games designer, who have all been using an existing system that allows games to be created and played but does not have narrative as an emphasis. The research alone makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in what people value in games. One educational challenge that emerges is familiar: getting students to consider not only their own interests when they draw up a design, but those of prospective players. The same leap of imagination is needed in interview: 'It's more difficult than other child-centred design processes,' says Robertson, 'as they tend to give the functions they want in games, not those they want to help them design games.'

In the projects mentioned above, the stories are being created by the users and the design of the tools is primarily to facilitate this possibility in a way that promotes learning. In a whole range of other projects described over the three days of the conference, narrative is provided to the users as stimulus to learning and the interactivity sits rather differently.

Two pieces of work from the Therapeutic Technologies Group at Media Lab Europe in Dublin illustrate the spectrum of approaches offered as ways of combining narrative and interactivity. "Working Things Out" is a CD of beautifully crafted stories made with adolescents overcoming depression and other mental health problems for use with other young people. A slider allows rapid movement to and fro through each story, which is narrated and animated. It is ideally meant for use with a counsellor and the interaction primarily takes place round the CD, since nothing is altered by using the controls.

At the other end of the scale, is the "Personal Investigator", a game which encourages young people to develop an improved self image through a series of quests. The player records experiences and choices on a detective's notepad, which is printed out to keep at the end of the game. Unlike many games, this one is not meant to be played over repeatedly by the same person and so alternative branches of experience within the game are not important. The value is provided by what the users write down for themselves. Again, this subtle tool incorporates a fairly simple narrative/interaction model, but in a wholly different way. Both rely on people to fill in the gaps, which is an important part of the therapeutic value.

But the relationship between narrative, interaction and learning can get a whole lot more fraught. Narrative, as mentioned, is not intrinsically interactive, though it can be made collaborative. Toss an idea to a storyteller and it will be gracefully incorporated a couple of minutes down the line. But the spell-binding immersion of the best stories cannot be achieved with constant interruption; the trance is broken.

At the moment, software is considerably less smart than human storytellers may be, and, though it begs use interactively, it does not lend itself to a collaborative storytelling approach. A story-based game will not generate an event or genre it doesn't have the programming for. This is less apparent than it might be in competent games, because they impose their own worlds with fixed rules, and plenty of action within limited parameters.

Move away from games towards storytelling and expectations of flexibility increase. It is still possible to limit the choice open to users, but get the balance wrong and the semblance of control is stripped away. A linear film, without pretensions to more, would be more acceptable. However, the more frequently and profoundly that a user may affect the action, the more programming is needed behind the scenes and each decision branch makes the product more complex, and thus more expensive.

Now recall that the role of educational narrative is to lead to a set of outcomes that teach, and so choice points have to be managed carefully to enhance learning.

The tensions at the heart of this relationship were subject of invited speaker Michael Young's contribution. He was describing his own work and that of Mark Riedl, one of his researchers at North Carolina State University. Young described the engine he is building for generating narrative dynamically. The instructions that control events include enough information about intentions that something resembling cause and effect informs the behaviour of agents in these tales. The result is computer-generated narratives that make sense as stories; in that, for instance, they do not have protagonist and enemy working together to achieve a goal.

However, as he adds the potential for interactivity, he adds a new layer of control – one that comes from outside the engine. If users are able to interact with the story, this will from time to time interfere with causal relationships, so some extra management is needed in the story planning.

He outlined his solution: at each point, the system needs to understand:
- what actions the user can take,
- what effect these would have,
- if they are messing with the story structure, and thus
- what response to make.
The simplest response possible is accommodation: replanning the story structure for whichever section has been violated with a new version that accepts the user's action and links back to the wider structure at a suitable point. The other response is intervention: if the user is proposing something that would make a dramatic change, such as undermining a key causal link, then the system can substitute an alternative but milder action. For instance, if the user decides to shoot the protagonist dead at an early point in the story, the system could modify this to shooting and missing.

'There has to be a trade-off between accommodation and intervention' said Young,' as users could get frustrated with repeatedly not quite achieving their goals. They will start to feel that the story is controlling them.'

When he then explained Riedl's work, it was clear that fixing some aspects of the story (in this case, for historical accuracy, the sequence in which historical events occurred) makes this process even more complicated. This equates to the situation with much teaching, where certain relationships need respecting if users are to make the connections deemed useful to them. However, the paper sparked off a lively discussion about just how much should be fixed in tools for teaching history, since much of learning comes from interrogating sources and contesting a single version of events. It was felt that watching the engine attribute intentions and speculate on possible actions would be more useful, than the 'black box' of a consummately narrative approach in this context.

There is no room here to describe every presentation, though the standard of design and analysis (and the quiet emphasis on user research and prototyping) made other conferences look rather patchy.

There must be room, however, for a description of the work shown by Lisa Gjedde of Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet, which gave control to users for whom access to learning and self-determination is a great struggle.

Designed to engage young people with multiple functional deficits aged 12-16, as well as normally functioning young learners, teachers, parents and siblings, the narrative upon which she has been working comes as a CD, with animation, narration and accompanying activities that relate directly to the story told. The software is designed to be used with special hardware that accommodates the variety of constraints that these user groups face. Access is by a switch that scans the options onscreen, or a touchscreen mechanism. It has been designed and tested working with 50 children whose motion may be limited to a single finger or nod of the head. Because consistency is of great value to these people, the tale itself does not branch, but the medieval world of the story is continued into opportunities, linked from appropriate parts of the tale, for composing music, assembling clothes, or designing a shield – online or off.

The narrative concerns a Knight of the Round Table who is sent by King Arthur to save his life by answering the question: What is it that women want most? The answer, he eventually discovers, is that they be allowed to decide things for themselves. And the story has resonance for this most challenged of groups.

Results with the software have been impressive – none of the regular signs of boredom or poor motivation from users, while teachers have been shocked by the skills that these young people have been able to demonstrate in using it. There were concerns that the elaborate telling of the story might obscure the point of it. But the synergy between the moral of the tale and the empowerment made possible by the system did not escape the people piloting it. As one boy made the effort to say: he liked being allowed to decide things.

Gjedde summed up: 'Inclusiveness means allowing for multiple points of entry and understanding relative to the students background, with multiple perspectives: allowing for multiple interpretations and constructions, and multiple learning styles: allowing for different modes of storytelling and expression, based on visual, auditory or verbal competencies.'

NILE itself is a warm and wise interactive learning environment as well as a showcase for others. And Paul Brna of the University of Northumbria, who has created NILE, makes sure that there is a narrative component to the conference as well as to the theme of the papers. This year it was a walk in the park with a storyteller. Interaction was represented by plenty of time for discussion, and specifically, a trip to the Royal Museum and a chance to meet school children who took part in computer game making workshops at the Edinburgh International Games Festival.

The next NILE conference is in 2006. Brna heard he had funding for the network proposal that will support it, in the same week as this year's conference ran. A story with no ending in sight, then...

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