pencils polymer & pixels

Prototypes are often used to support a story.  We use them to inform or convince a user, client or creative team. But what is the message we want to convey?  A colleague of mine recently gave a presentation on a product design prototype for a new “green” packaging solution.  After several rounds of refinement, the creative director asked, “what is the story you are telling.”  He wanted to know the basic plot.  Upon thinking, the designers realized it was a classic boy meets girl.  Using this central plot line, the prototype and presentation of that work took shape.

Can the basic plots of storytelling help guide what we communicate through prototypes?

There are several classifications, two of which are listed in brief below:

Christopher Booker and his 700 page taxonomy of the basic plots.  There is a nice blog post on Only a Game summing up the work and provides a nice consolidation. The seven are listed below.  It’s a controversial categorization but the shortlist is an interesting reference tool.

Overcoming the Monster (and the Thrilling Escape from Death)

Examples: Perseus, Theseus, Beowulf, Dracula, War of the Worlds, Nicholas Nickleby, The Guns of Navarone, Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, James Bond, Star Wars: A New Hope.

Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (The Call)
2. Dream Stage (Initial Success)
3. Frustration Stage (Confrontation)
4. Nightmare Stage (Final Ordeal)
5. Miraculous Escape (Death of the Monster)

Rags to Riches

Examples: Cinderella, Aladdin, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, David Copperfield
Dark Version: Le Rouge et Le Noir (1831), What Makes Sammy Run? (1940)

Meta-plot structure:

1. Initial Wretchedness at Home (The Call)
2. Out into the World (Initial Success)
3. The Central Crisis
4. Independence (Final Ordeal)
5. Final Union, Completion and Fulfilment

The Quest

Examples: The Odyssey, Pilgrim’s Progress, King Solomon’s Mines, Watership Down

Meta-plot structure:

1. The Call (Oppressed in the City of Destruction)
2. The Journey (Ordeals of the Hero/Heroine & Companions)
   May include some or all of the following:
   a. Monsters
   b. Temptations
   c. The Deadly Opposites
   d. The Journey to the Underworld
3. Arrival and Frustration
4. The Final Ordeals
5. The Goal (Kingdom, Other Half or Elixir won)

Voyage & Return

Examples: Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Orpheus, The Time Machine, Peter Rabbit, Brideshead Revisited, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Gone with the Wind, The Third Man (1948)

Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (‘Fall’ into the Other World)
2. Initial Fascination (Dream Stage)
3. Frustration Stage
4. Nightmare Stage
5. Thrilling Escape and Return

Comedy

Comedy is dealt with by a less rigid structure. In essence, the comedy meta-plot is about building an absurdly complex set of problems which then miraculously resolve at the climax. There is much discussion of how the comedy plot has developed over time:

Stage one: Aristophanes
Stage two: ‘The New Comedy’ (comedy becomes a love story)
Stage three: Shakespeare (plot fully developed)
Comedy as real life: Jane Austen
The plot disguised: Middlemarch, War and Peace
The plot burlesqued: Gilbert & Sullivan, Oscar Wilde

Meta-plot structure:

1. Under the Shadow
   A little world in which people are under the shadow of confusion, uncertainty and frustration and are shut up from one another.
2. Tightening the Knot
   The confusion gets worse until the pressure of darkness is at its most acute and everyone is in a nightmarish tangle.
3. Resolution
   With the coming to light of things not previously recognised, perceptions are dramatically changed. Shadows are dispelled, the situation is miraculously transformed and the little world is brought together in a state of joyful union.

Tragedy

Examples: Macbeth, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Carmen, Bonnie & Clyde, Jules et Jim, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Julius Caesar

Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (Greed or Selfishness)
2. Dream Stage
3. Frustration Stage
4. Nightmare Stage
5. Destruction or Death Wish Stage

Rebirth

Examples: Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, The Snow Queen, A Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, Peer Gynt

Meta-plot structure:

1. Under the Shadow
   A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of a dark power
2. The Threat Recedes
   Everything seems to go well for a while - the threat appears to have receded.
3. The Threat Returns
   Eventually the threat approaches again in full force, until the hero or heroine is seen imprisoned in a state of living death.
4. The Dark Power Triumphant
   The state of living death continues for a long time when it seems the dark power has completely triumphed.

Miraculous Redemption
If the imprisoned person is a heroine, redeemed by the hero; if a hero, by a young woman or child.

Another classification of interest is by the Irish playwright Denis Johnston classified eight “dramatic plots”:

Cinderella
Unrecognised virtue at last recognised; the hero doesn’t have to be a girl, it does not have to be a love story - the Tortoise and the Hare is the same plot. The essence is that Good is despised but recognised in the end - something we all want to believe.

Achilles
The fatal flaw; the basis of all classical tragedy, though it can also be comic, as in many farces.

Faust
The debt that must be paid, the fate that catches up with us sooner or later.

Tristan
The standard triangular plot of two women and a man or two men and a woman.

Circe
The spider and the fly; Othello, and The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

Romeo and Juliet
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy either finds or does not find girl - it does not matter which.

Orpheus
The gift that is taken away. The action may be based on the tragedy of the loss itself as in Juno and the Paycock, or based on the search following the loss as in Jason and the Golden Fleece.

The Irrepressible Hero
As in Harvey filmed with James Stewart.

Comic style sketch

Prototypes are used to tell stories. How you tell a story greatly defines what you tell. Matt Madden has an excellent book and site dedicated to this subject with 99 explorations of the same story through variations of stlye. The various forms inform us in different ways through style. One of my favorite examples shown on his site is the same story from the image above only in the form of a map.

For more about illustrating and writing in the comic style, see the work of Scott McCloud.

Map view

This looks like a really interesting tool but there is little information outside of this demo

“A 3D curve sketching system that captures some of the affordances of pen and paper for professional designers, allowing them to iterate directly on concept 3D curve models. The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.”

http://www.ilovesketch.com/

An excellent example of how prototyping works from idea to production.  Observation > Sketching > Modeling > Testing > Revising > Specification > Production.  One of the interesting things to watch for here is the level of fidelity in the methods.  Sketches, models and prototypes all advance the concept and feed back into its refinement.

Strida

Mcor Technologies

The cost of 3d printers may have just dropped and become a little more green.  Mcor uses regular office paper and a water based glue to render 3d models.  Essentially, this is a particle board form. A number of surface treatments can be applied to harden, shape and detail the print.  In addition, multiple forms can easily be joined to produce larger forms.

Bill Buxton, Author of Sketching User Experiences, takes time out in a chapter called Anatomy of Sketching to capture the attributes as sketching.  Across design, you can see how these apply, architecture, fashion, industrial, etc.

• They are quick to make and timely to talk about the idea
• They are inexpensive and easy to dispose of (making designers less “wedded” to a particular idea because of investment)
• They are plentiful (designers should bring many different ideas-as-sketches to the table, not just one)
• They have a clear vocabulary (such as drawing through the endpoints to show the “unfinishedness” of the idea)
• They use no higher resolution than necessary (so they don’t waste designer’s time and effort in preparation)
• Their resolution does not suggest they are further along than they really are (to avoid giving the impression of being more done than reality)
• They suggest and explore instead of confirming (to support ideation, instead of forcing decisions)

Do these have a place in interaction design? When we practice these, are we sketching or are we prototyping?  Is there a difference?

Alexander Calder, the American sculptor had an extraordinary way of storytelling with minimalist detail and inexpensive materials. The Movie Le Cirque was made in 1961 by Carlos Vilardebó, and is part of the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum.  Le Cirque is art, and the attributes fit nicely with the materials, methods and influence we strive for in early prototypes.  Le Cirque lets are minds play with the idea of the circus.

Adrian Bowyer at PopTech!