Interactive Narratives with 3D Environments

Abstract: One of the major problems in human computer interaction in a 3D virtual world is the extreme difficulty to deal with vast quantities of information in everyday life. This condition leads to problems such as indecisions of the human that outlines stress factors and causes an undesirable user experience. Part of the problem is that little findings have been contributed in research to this problem of assisting the human to make decisions quickly and provide rapid responses in respect to user experience. User experience evaluation of the human’s communication appears well situated to problems of this nature as it can be analyzed based upon interactive performance factors that help in the decision making process. For this reason, scenarios, adaptive narratives and frameworks were investigated and created as a potential tool to improve the human’s experience using cues of user’s interest related suggestions. For the purpose of a fluent interaction, a balance between passive and active interaction is aimed at and at last to achieve an immersive user experience an adaptive interactive narrative is generated that supports customizable feedback. To introduce a sophisticated version of a framework and design techniques, literature reviews, video recordings, questionnaires and personal experience evaluation have been conducted. A new platform for immersive interactions in a 3D virtual world has evolved. However, it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to evaluate the design in a setting that includes new technologies, where not much research has been done before. Based on these difficulties, the concept of three design techniques were developed and employed, in order to deal with the issue of decision-making that exists in daily life. These three techniques represent the scientific contribution to the stated major problems such as balanced interaction, immersive user experience and customizable data. This Master thesis discusses and concludes a generalizable framework on the result that was obtained when the adaptive narrative was created with its vast quantity of information that is applicable into other related installations in the commercial product design industry.