Scott Morrison
MA Candidate, Educational Technology
Concordia University
Montreal, Canada
smorr@alcor.concordia.ca
The implications of MUDs (Multi-User Domains) and MOOs (MUDs - Object Oriented) and text based virtual realities (hereafter collectively called 'MUDs') on the construction of identity have recently been seriously examined by several sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists and computer scientists (c.f. Turkle, 1996; Cherny, 1995; Rheingold, 1993; Serpentelli, nd; Curtis, nd). However, the use of MUDs for specific educational and developmental aims may be problematic as MUDs often lack the necessary structure that ensures that participants have certain experiences. While it may be possible to design and structure MUDs according to some pedagogic objectives, such MUDs may at best provide a loose environment that may use an educational setting as a metaphor but cannot provide enough structure to ensure specific experiences. It may be more fruitful to search for alternative virtual experiences that better facilitate the structure necessary for addressing the development of identities (specifically, moral identities). This paper explores some specific design considerations for a virtual experience (the 'MENO' experience) which is similar to and founded on the concept of a MUD but attempts to provide a more structured experience than what is inherent in MUDS.
The 'MENO' (Multimedia Experiences of Narrative Objects) project is a proposed virtual experience that addresses many theoretical ideas related the development of identities as narrative and performative experiences. These ideas are derived from a broad consideration of social science and liberal arts fields such as anthropology (Ritual Process, structure and antistructure), sociology (conceptions of self), and psychology (Vygotskian socio culturalism, activity theory). It is not the intention of this paper to discuss these ideas in full, their relevant key points are summarized below so to provide a basic rationale and direction for experience design. This rationale is based upon integrating the extensions of two premises: 1) that identities (and, of specific interest, moral identities) can be framed in terms of performances and narration by emphasizing role definitions, subjunctive activity, and consequently liminal (threshold) experiences, 2) that virtual computer environments such as MUDs can offer experiences that are liminal in nature and so form an arena of liminal experience design.
A postmodern framing of 'identity'. This includes consideration of identity as performance and narratives. Such a framing recognizes:
Virtual experiences may have a liminal quality in that
With these key ideas, the concept of self (or selves) as dramatic and narrative, and virtual experiences as dramatic and narrative come together. Their integration points towards the use of several anthropological, narrative, and dramatic structures or approaches in constructing experiences (virtual experiences to be precise) that will serve the development of postmodern concepts of identities.
In short the ambition of the MENO project is to facilitate the development of roles or identities, and their ethical or moral aspect, through the use of subjunctivity, the psychological state of liminality, and performative and narrative structures (and antistructures). The developmental path is one are based on ethical themes such as Gilligan's (1993) theme of care and responsibility. Such themes that begs a consideration of performative and narrative paradigms in ethics, developmental psychology, and the consequent design for subjunctivity or liminality in virtual environments.
Apart from its theoretical considerations, the MENO project has many design considerations. While the previous summary outlines some important characteristics of the project, the summary provide little information or direction on realize the development of a MENO environment. The remaining focus of this paper is to examine guidelines for virtual experience design that may be used for the prototypical development of a MENO environment. The examination will present critical characteristics and guidelines that are essential to consider for a blueprint for liminal experience design that are surmised from a review of relevant literature on the design of virtual environments and performative approaches to interface.
Design and development considerations present themselves at two essential levels:
Because they are virtual, MUDs are necessarily metaphoric environments. As they have no physical basis in reality, they ultimately must refer in their structure and content to real human experiences and environments if humans are to be able to grasp and explore them. Consequently most MUDs use real human organizations such as cities, buildings, and even positions in time to provide the basis of the metaphor of the environment. As Andreas Dieberger (1994) argues that such metaphors or conceptual organizations are useful for non-real space because humans use similar organizing principles in their daily life.
Dieberger observes that most MUDs are currently designed to represent space. In this regard, the user does not find him/herself amidst a linear stream of data but within a virtual physical place or location. This spatial metaphor essentially changes the "collection of abstract symbols on the screen [words, pictures, icons etc.] into an environment usable to organize objects in space." (p 7.) Thus, by analogous navigation or travel between represented locations, users gain access to different objects and meet others with whom they interact. While these locations or places are in reality data-structures and collections of abstract symbols, they are also the conceptual 'containers' in which users act upon objects and interact with one another. The immediately apparent advantage of such a representation is that when streams of data are represented as objects within a spatial metaphor, users can better manipulate the objects in an active and performative manners.
Dieberger (1994) advocates that the mere spatial organization of data into locations and objects are a restricted use of the metaphor. His full conception of the spatial metaphor would "turn a space into a place - a space that has meaning to its inhabitants and users."(p 139) Accordingly, space must include social aspects, communication, and culture. It is this insight that truly differentiates a virtual experience such as a MUD from a computer interface exemplified in a sophisticated manner by the Macintosh Finder and in a simple manner by a unix command prompt. MUDs extend the concept of human computer interface well beyond mere interface issues because users have presence in that virtual space. The represented space is not one that a user directly interacts with, but one with which s/he can interact in the role of an identity or character who conceptually resides in the virtual space. Laurel (1993) refers to first-person involvement in the experience as agency. In the context of virtual environments, agency which is well characterized and designed can give the user a sense of being a part, rather than an observer, of complex action. (Laurel, 1993)
Consequently we see that MUDs have two critical features: environment: the metaphoric representation of essentially streams of data, and agency: the idea that the user (or more specifically, his/her representation) is implicitly manifested in that flow of data. It is through the interaction of these features that promotes the psychological feeling of 'being there,' wherever 'there' is. As I will further discuss, both features must both be accommodated in a virtual experience if it is to be psychologically effective. However, one must not be deceived that the spatial metaphor in particular is sine non quo for agency and psychological immersion. The psychological power of spatial metaphors lies not with the concept of spatial but with concept of metaphor. Spatial metaphors are but one instance of psychologically powerful metaphors which allow the representation of the user in the stream of data.
To this end, Dieberger admonishes designers to "triple check if using a spatial metaphor makes sense in the system and which concept of space is to be used." (p 141) In light of this advice, one must ask whether the need for user representation in the metaphor necessitates a spatial metaphor for the virtual experiences? The MENO concept answers this question in the negative and challenges the spatial metaphor as being the exclusive way of designing virtual experience. In short, I argue that a spatial metaphor is not essential for immersion and other metaphors may be more appropriate for different online activities, such as the development of a multifaceted concept of identity
Much of the previously outlined theoretical foundation regarding the development of identities suggests that a performative or narrative structure may be more appropriate for some developmental experiences.
Consequently, when educational technology and specifically the concept of virtual environments is brought to such an approach, we are left with the notion of structuring virtual experiences according to performative or narrative metaphors. Rather than having the experiences structured on the idea that a representation of the user occupies a location or room within the virtual environment, the MENO project turns a place into a situation and puts the user amidst a flow of events, be it a drama or narrative. The situation or 'Narrative Object' as the kernel of the metaphor is inclusive of some aspects of the spatial metaphor. For example, the situation includes depictions of the setting and objects within the setting. But situation is much more than location in that situation includes events, social relationships and roles, an immediate past or cause for the situations, and potential actions and futures. In MUDs and spatial virtual experiences in which activities, histories, interactions, and potential futures of characters are ephemeral or dependent on whoever happens to be occupying the location at a given time. In narrative based virtual experience, however, events, pasts, and potential futures of characters are more strongly fixed to the situation.
Navigation also is conceived of differently when the metaphor changes. When the location is the kernel of the experience, as they are in spatial metaphors, navigation is often analogous to physical movement from one location to another. However, when situation is designed as the basis of the experience, navigation becomes a cause/effect or action/consequence pairing in which the consequence is a new situation that is causally related to the action selected in the preceding situation.
It is my contention that such a representation better integrates the concept of time, causality, and social relationships into the virtual experience than does the spatial metaphor, and thus provide a perhaps more appropriate structure than spatial MUDs for exploring some aspects of social activity, role performance, and identity construction. Unfortunately, the design and development of situational based virtual experiences is, to my knowledge, unprecedented. This leaves us with few guidelines for virtual experience design and development other than those which we can draw from performative approaches to computer interface design, interactive fictions, and the design of spatial MUDS.
By considering current literature regarding computer interface design, interactive fictions, and spatial metaphors, we find that many design objectives and issues are similar or amenable to the narrative metaphor. Specifically, the design goal of 'immersion' that is common this literature coheres to the its underlying theoretical foundations for the MENO. Appropriating immersion as a goal provides us direction for the MENO project and lends us a 'glue' that binds the design narrative virtual experience to the many design considerations that follow.
The concept of immersion (Platt) or engagement (Laurel) is a common design goal for many virtual experiences, be they performative interfaces, interactive fictions or MUDs and M00s. Immersion goes beyond the mere accommodation or inclusion of the user in the flow of data or the constructed metaphor of the virtual experience. Rather, it entails the aesthetic design of the experience so that the user will psychologically feel or sense that s/he is an actual participant in the experience rather than an observer of it. Immersion involves a 'willing suspension of disbelief' (Laurel, 1993) in order for the user to enjoy or respond emotionally to the experience. In the words of Laurel: "we agree to think and feel in terms of both the content and conventions of a mimetic context. In return, we gain a plethora of new possibilities for action and a kind of emotional guarantee." (p 115.) Thus the user agrees to enter into a psychologically subjunctive state of 'as if' (or 'what if') in which the representational nature of the virtual experience is subsumed into the experience itself. The experience becomes 'real' in so much as it is seen as if it were real. Specific design issues to be examined will return to this design goal. With such reflection, I will work towards integrating this goal with a theme of development of identity that arises from the examination of anthropological and dramatic structures in activity.
The design of spatial MUDs is not merely virtual cartography. While we may be able to create a two or three dimensional map of a imaginary world, such a simple representation is not psychologically powerful enough give the sense of immersion. Accordingly, the first set of general design guidelines deal with what Tromp(1994) terms apparent reality. Specifically, Tromp argues that the environment should have a realistic quality: Designers should embellish virtual experiences so that users are willing to believe that they are, or have the potential of, being real.
This consideration does not imply that virtuality should be a mirror of a non- virtual reality. Conversely, if computer experiences are designed in accordance to a dramatic metaphor, designers would orchestrate computer experiences to conform to a 'flying wedge' of activity progression. (Laurel, 1993) This wedge graphically describes the transformation of activities from probabilities to necessities in a field of potentialities. Thus the design of the virtual space should be designed according to probability or potentiality of objects, locations, and actions with a consistent virtual experience instead of their precise correspondence to real objects, locations, actions (i.e. their necessities).
However, credibility is not the same as factuality and we should attend to Aristotle's observation of dramatic action that an impossible probability is preferable to an improbable possibility. (Laurel, 1993) Credibility, unlike factuality, holds a connotation of belief, or in the very least, a willing suspension of disbelief. While it may not be factual or possible to have wondrous machines such as replicators, phasers, or starships, it is credible or even probable to have such objects in a virtual experience based on Star Trek. Conversely, objects that have factual reality in non-virtual environments (for example, a musket) may have little credibility in a some virtual environments (for example a futuristic setting) unless they have been appropriately accommodated. As Tromp puts it, "credibility ... is not based on realism as compared to the real world, but on realism within the frame of reference." (1994)
The notion of impossible probability allows for the credible use of what are called 'magic features' in MUDS. (Dieberger, 1994) Because virtual experiences are subjunctive, normal laws of physics, and facts of nature and reality do not have to always apply. Written as a guideline: designers may use magic features to relieve the experience of detail that is too fine, activities that are too tedious and to provide a better sense Of cause and effect and flow of activity. In MUDS, time machines and teleporters abound. In fact, the use of magical features are considered as the main advantage of MUDs (Dieberger) as they can condense time and activity in the experience so that the user does not have to concern him/herself with endless details and intermediate steps in performing actions and navigating. Activity within virtual experiences must have reasonably immediate and understandable consequences. (Laurel, 1993; Tromp, 1994)
Part of the illusion of immersion and agency in MUDs is that activity is primarily teleological. That is, the user can easily direct his/her actions towards end goals or locations. Too much intervening detail presents a challenge to that teleologic nature and breaks or throws the apparent reality. When extraneous information and requirements are removed through the magical play on time, action, and setting, the user is able to have a more enjoyable or ludic experience. In a seemingly paradoxical way, through magic, the sense of credibility and immersion is heightened.
Laurel elaborates upon the concept of apparent reality by addressing the need for the consistency of the metaphor. Specifically the system must maintain a specific metaphor or representational context throughout the experience. (Laurel, 1993) The user should never be 'thrown' out of the metaphor or forced to deal directly with the system or other metaphors. While I will not delve deeply into this topic, this concept of throwness can be directly related to the Heideggerian concept of throwness and his nomenclature of 'ready-to-hand', 'unready-to-hand', and 'present-at-hand' in understanding the nature of activity.
Other concepts that illuminate this imperative are those of liminality (Turner) and 'flow'. (Csikszentmihalyi) When accommodating technology, liminality may be defined to include the psychological state that occurs when the user is separated from the quotidian, and direct experience of the computer and enters into a subjunctive and indirect experience of the virtual environment. In effect, the actual computer system becomes something that the user acts through rather than with. (Laurel, 1993) The computer is the mediator of the liminal experience and not the experience itself. (To frame this in perhaps an extreme way, the relationship between the computer as mediator and the experience parallels the relationship between the sign and the signified.) Such a perspective suggests that the computer becomes 'invisible' leaving the user (actor) to directly experience the activity. Consequently, Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow involves a dissolution of the line (or mediation qua computer) between the actor and the activity (Turner, 1982). MacAloon also describes flow as the "holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement," and the 'state in which action follows action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention." (in Turner, 1982; pp. 55-56)
Accordingly, the computer interface of a virtual experience should not institute a clear delineation between the user and the computer representation. Rather, it should promote the intermingling of the concepts of user-in-role and representation-as-reality. Thus the 'real' user becomes more subjunctive as the subjunctive representation becomes more 'real'.
Turner, by way of his synopsis of the further elements of 'flow', provides further guidelines for design of liminality. The merging of action and awareness can be effected by a "centering of attention on a limited stimulus field" (page 56), and by not subverting the 'autotelic' nature of the experience. (Turner, 1982) The latter element of flow maintains that the experience as a whole needs no goal or reward besides the enjoyment of the experience itself. Note that this does not necessarily detract from the possibly teleologic nature of specific acts within the experience or that the whole experience may be reflexive of quotidian life. Rather, it should refers to the principle that the any overt goals of the experience be de-emphasized, implicit or subverted.
While Laurel discusses a temporal consistency of metaphor, Tromp addresses the consistency as internal consistency of elements. According to Tromp designers should ensure that similar events, functions, acts and consequences are relatively consistent and singular in nature or characteristics throughout the experience. As an example, Tromp points out that objects within the environment should be simple and easy to use. In this vein, an object should have limited and easy to grasp functionality. It is better to have several objects that do different things than one multipurpose object. ["but wait... my pen is also a laser and a communicator"] If an object has a function in one location, it should generally retain its functionality elsewhere in the experience. Objects that are similar in description and nature should have similar functionality. Additionally, although the 'magic' nature of virtual environments allow for functionality of objects that do not really exist, that functionality still have to remain credible. Designers should ensure that the magic features are consistent with the metaphor of the experience and they help maintain the illusion rather than distract from it. In short, the experience should have an internal logic that promotes an similar internal logic evocative of the state of flow.
Related to Tromp's notion of consistency is her notion of goodness of fit. Drawing from insights in environmental psychology and urban and architectural design (c.f. Alexander, 1970), Tromp sees that designers should work towards the achievement of fitness between the experiences over which the user has control and the context that places contingencies or demands on those experiences. In Tromp's words, "the criterion of fit is found by clarifying the context, and by neutralizing the incongruities which cause misfit. When there are no misfits left, a condition of good fit will occur." While Tromp advises the research of metaphors and incongruities that arise from implementing multiple metaphors, this design guideline, perhaps more than any other, allows a wide license for aesthetics in design.
Aesthetics in design is the issue that prompt many virtual environment designers to harken to the works of Christopher Alexander (cf. The Timeless Way of Building, 1979; A Pattern Language, 1977) a designer who discusses environmental design based on pattern languages. A pattern language is a system of design grammars, meanings, representations, and relationships that embodies objective but ineffable qualities. Alexander argues that while such qualities are easily recognizable, they escape the precise definitions that would allow their unconsidered application in varied settings and situations. At best, the qualities can only be approach in indirect ways such as through case based studies, and the use of metaphor and anecdotes that relate experiences, and observations. Computer scientist Richard Gabriel (1993) describes these 'qualities without names' as engendering yet transcending terms such as 'alive', 'whole', 'comfortable', 'free', 'exact', 'egoless', and 'eternal'. Alexander's somewhat anti-rationalistic concept of pattern language has made many inroads into disciplines such as computer science which are seemingly distinct from his original discipline of architecture and urban planning. However, it is easy to appreciate the relevance of pattern languages and the accommodation of 'qualities without names' in the design of virtual environments and experiences. It strikes me as no coincidence that many of the academics investigating cyberspace are architects and urban designers. (C.f. Benedikt.)
To this end, the designers of virtual settings should aim the environment to be harmonic to activity and objects and not dissonant or 'unready to hand' to user in flow. In addition to Alexander's basic design philosophy, virtual experience designers should in the very least consider and preferably embrace many of his 253 patterns for environmental design.
Once 'apparent reality' is roughly established and designed for, the designers of virtual experiences need to consider the design of apparent presence: the concept that the user is present in the experience. Accordingly, design of a virtual experience should incorporate the user as an integral presence in the experience rather than just an 'ethereal' agent who has no apparent presence but still is able manipulates objects in the experience.
Tromp elaborates the design of apparent presence by specifying how the environment should be structured so to reinforce illusion of the user being immersed in the environment. Laurel (1993) refers to a mimetic principle within which represented activity is portrayed in appropriate sensory modalities so to render the virtual experience more 'first person' in quality. The dramatic notion of human computer activities regards interface as multisensory representations of actions with the user as participant or agent. Coincidentally, it is this Aristotlean principle of dramatic mimesis that leads to catharthis of experience: that the experience is enjoyable. To design for such catharthis, Laurel advocates that "virtual environments should be enhanced by dramatic forms and structures that support complex emotional textures [and experiences]. " (Laurel, p 207)
In relation to the development of identity, Brecht expands upon the Aristotlean conception of catharthis as emotional release by adding that catharthis is achieved only when the performance is instituted in everyday or quotidian life. (Laurel, 1993) Thus, Laurel parallels the liminality of Van Gennep and Turner in observing that with Brechtian catharthis, the representation (or performance) "lives between imagination and reality, serving as a conductor, amplifier, clarifier, and motivator." (Laurel, p 31)
In seeming accordance to Laurel's use of the mimesis principle, Tromp (1994) recommends that virtual experiences should a) present high resolution information, b) present information consistently across all the senses possible, c) allow users to interact with objects and others, d) represent the user consistently and in accordance to the user actions, and e) avoid relationships between activity and effect that would be difficult to model over time. In short, the environment should provide the user with information concerning his/her representation in the computer environment so that he/she can sense (see, hear, etc.) that representation as vividly, consistently, and effectively as possible or plausible.
While it seems that this necessity for 'being there' requires complex interfaces providing wide bandwidths of sensory information, Laurel tempers this apparent conclusion:
| We mustn't fall prey to the notion that more is always better, or that our task is the seemingly impossible one of emulating the sensory and experiential bandwidth of the real world. Artistic selectivity is the countervailing force - capturing what is essential in the most effective and economic way. (Laurel, p 118) |
If high bandwidth were necessary in film and television to entertain or educate, cartoon animations and minimalist sets or characters would not enjoy the popularity or respect they do. Perhaps a comic panel board format of a virtual experience could be more effective than fully rendered and detailed graphics and video in virtual experience. It seems then that the achievement of immersion or apparent presence requires a use of sensory information which is balanced against other aesthetic and design concerns.
The merging of action and awareness that is a fundamental element of flow concurs with Laurels temperance. This merging stems from the "centering of attention on a limited stimulus field" and clear and unambiguous feedback to actions (Turner, 1982, p56) The amplification of consciousness (and consequently agency) should result from intensification rather than expansion., In terms of design, intensification comes from the prescription of implicit roles, rules and/or structure, whereas expansion comes from their allowance. It matters not that we can perform in any way in an experience but that we are able or perhaps prompted to perform in specific ways -- ways that are defined as implicit roles and by implicit rules. If it is the intent to clarify experience (as suggested in the use of Brechtian notions of catharthis) the free and untempered use of multi-modal feedback information would only serve to obfuscate the consequence of the activity, rather than intensify and clarify it.
Such intensification, implicit roles, and rules should not be seen as prescriptive and structural however. When crafted properly, they should alter potential actions rather than limit action in general. They should allow for the anti structure in any structure to manifest itself. Roles and rules should shift the actor from his or her everyday state of indicative reality and cause/effect inevitabilities (or resignments) to subjunctive states of potentialities. As we have seen, one source of such potentiality of the liminal experience should be seen as inherent in the activity of the actor. Other sources of such potentiality should stem from the potential activity and action of the experience itself. Hence, the design of a virtual experience should accommodate potential action or activity within its objects, settings, and events.
Objects, locations, and happenings should not be merely viewed as static structures that are to be explored in the virtual experience. Rather, the experience should be designed so that these objects, locations, and happenings can be perceived in terms of potential actions, functions, or activities. Tromps considers this potentiality or subjunctivity in terms of indicative reality. First, "participants in a [virtual environment] will be able to behave most naturally if the virtual objects and events convey the same affordances as their real-life counterparts." (Tromp, unpaginated) A lamp, for example should have the same functionality of a lamp with which we are familiar in the non-virtual experiences. If turning a switch on a lamp causes a TV to turn on, or the lamp that is placed in the virtual environment cannot be acted on, an amount of credibility is loss, promoting a disturbance of the state of immersion in the experience and break in flow. Second, Tromp recommends that if objects created for the experience have no real world counterparts, metaphors or analogies to real objects should be carefully chosen. To paraphrase the intent of Tromp's guidelines, the probability of potentially it to be emphasized over the possibility. Simply, the possible and impossible should not be improbable so that it counters our expectations of cause/consequence relations.
Again, returning to Turner's analysis of elements of Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, appropriate experience design should maintain the ability of the actor to control his/her actions and environments while maintaining a loss of ego. (Turner, 1982) In essence, the experience should embody a specific structure when it concerns agency and control, but it embody an antistructure when it concerns role. The user must be able to act in the environment but not as him or herself. To borrow Susan Warshauer's (1994) terminology, the user engages in 'heavy role-playing' whilst in the state of flow. For inducing this particular aspect of flow, I have found little explicit advice on the design of experience. If any such guidelines are to be used, they perhaps are yet to be constructed. In this constructive process, I recommend that designers follow Laurel's and Turkle's leads and attend to 'real life' performances (i.e. real life social and aesthetic dramas) and their structures and anti-structures.
The design of virtual experiences is not a straight-forward or systematic task and nor do we have much explicit direction in their design. While virtual experiences are technologically recent, with insight and creativity, designers can draw upon principles, imperatives, and experiences found in social and aesthetic drama, narrative literature, and the small number virtual environments already designed and created. Essentially, designers must be able to theoretically integrate many perceptual, psychological, social, narrative, and performative concerns and subsequently be able to implement the constructed theoretical foundation as both an metaphorical and subjunctive experience and a real datastructure and program. In this paper, I presented a small number of guidelines that deal with critical concerns in design of virtual experiences. Underlying these guidelines are themes of immersion, flow, liminality, and subjunctivity. The same themes also describe a synthesis of psychological, anthropological, and sociological concerns that point in the direction of a pedagogy of postmodern identity.
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