What type of storytelling devices do you see in webpages? Give some examples.
Narrative suggests a perspective, one that is guiding the story recipient through the tale. With interactive environments, and as suggested by Brenda Laurel in Computers as Theater, the story being told is one of action by the user towards a goal.
From Laurel's original perspective, much has been accomplished in software design to move the user's focus from how the machinery needs to be told to get things done to what the user wants to do. The standard icon-driven website desktop and website gui permits what is effectively a branching/threaded/pathed experience through a content-space to arrive at an outcome; a piece of information found, an experience had.
While avatar guides still tend to occur, they tend now to be restricted to children's sites or to advertisements in the form of a Flash-video overlay that interrupts/invites the user to another site. Online games have a lot of this and - given the explicit use of characters in these true interactive narratives, it is in my opinion a better application of the device than as a help function on a website.
There is a dialogic charater to the "wizard" and being guided to complete online memberships.
This is especially true as accomplished in Linkedin, with a visible completion bar and guiding the user to the next action one should take to achieve "completeness". The experience of setting up an online profile here is much like creating a character in a narrative-based roleplaying game and is an excellent example of narration of action in the web environment.
Linkedin also uses the actions of the users network - so and so "joined the group" - as an opportunity to inform the user of options and to start new actions for the user with a story-like hook to "(f)ind a group for you".
The process of joining a group/site or making an online purchase tends to involve increasing revelations of the power of the network/tool (foreshadowing) while asking for ever more personal information and presenting legal responsibilities and disclaimers. There is a story-like build up with the awareness of costs and benefits to the user becoming apparent. Then there is the crux moment of hitting the "join/buy" button, when the process locks in and the action is completed. Aspects of narrative resolution occurs in the "thank you" and new story possibilities are introduced as possible actions by the site's narrator.
Do you think that all devices are appropriate on-line (why/why not)?
Aristotle's Poetics describes two types of drama, the representation of action; comedy and tragedy (it also provided the theory of dramatic narrative which has continued with minor modification to the 20th Century and formed the basis of Laurel's Computers as Theater). Comedy is a reversal of fortune from ill to good; tragedy the reverse. In Laurel's model, then, the successful interactive experience that designers are looking to create is interactive comedy. The user comes with a problem and - through their own actions towards a goal mediated by the technology - it all works out in the end.
Wikipedia has an extensive list of literary techniques, devices which are employed by authors to deliver their narrative. Many of them are quite appropriate to the question/search/answer use of the Web such as foreshadowing (anticipation), backstory (context), emplottment (delivering information as needed/for effect), catharsis (emotionally satisfying resolution of action).
Many of the techniques don't fit the "looking for information" model that well, but I can well imagine situations for nearly all of them where they would be appropriate online for delivering certain types of user experience. For example - "plot twist" is one of the key dramatic techniques recommended by Aristotle. Emplottment delivers information to best (dramatic) effect, with one piece of information delivered at a climactic moment suddenly "reversing" the understanding of the accumulated knowledge (Oedipus learning that he has killed his father and married his mother; tragedy!). For online use - learning, (re)searching, community participation - the plot twist may not be desirable. However, you can well imagine its use in search queries designed to inspire innovation by twisting the results, or by using juxtaposition and defamiliarization to help see things differently. Brechtian techniques of alienation or distancing could be very useful for breaking community/communication silos to aid non-partisan interaction in online political forums.
Find an example website and analyze whether colour choices reflect psychology. Explain your analysis.
Google's branding and interface is blue and white, with accents of red, green and yellow. Initially launched just over a decade ago to predominantly NA/Western audiences, the colour psychology chart appears to be quite an accurate reflection of the site intention: simplicity, accuracy, reliability. These primary attributes are all well supported by the white and blue colours. Accents of red, green, and yellow bring hints of power, luck and optimism, very well suited to the mind-space surrounding Internet search.
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