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Design Process

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Across all my courses, I'm moving towards a consistent process for design projects.  It focuses on DRAMATIC ENGAGEMENT. Dramatic Engagement Design Steps 1-4 , Lori Landay Dramatic Engagement Design Step 5, Lori Landay It starts with identifying the emotion or tone you want your person (the term I use because "user" seems wrong) to feel.  There might be one main emotion, or a sequence of emotions in a journey or an arc.  Even if it it is within one emotion, there should be movement, and change, unless the experience is the equivalent of an Imagist poem , like my audiovisual and kinetic virtual installation Ice Opal (made in Second Life, 2011). That experience is about a fusion of opposites. So, you start with the emotion, and then quickly draw a roller coaster diagram of  the "ride" of the experience you are creating for your person.  Every cultural artifact has a ride.  Some are almost effortless for your person, like the smooth ride of Classica
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Emotion, Awe, and the Sublime

The article we read for today's Startup Lab suggests that positive emotions are more effective than unpleasant ones in an immersive or interactive VR stroytelling experience when the creators want to change how their player/viewer (which I refer to as "your person") thinks, believes, or acts/behaves. Ann Searight Christiano writes: Pleasant emotions often get overlooked in storytelling, but they can be extremely powerful. Scholars have long understood the power of awe, also known as the “ overview effect .” This theory was first captured by writer Frank White after he interviewed 29 astronauts. He found that people who had seen the Earth from space, or who observed someone who had, were filled with a sense of awe that opened them to new perspectives and connection to humanity. More recently, psychologists have suggested that inspiring awe in your audience can open people up to new ideas, foster self reflection and  increase altruism.   (see:  Science of Story Building
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