Blog Post 9

 How do these two hypertexts fit into this "genre" of literature? What elements of chapter 10 can you apply to their interface and interactive design? What elements of literature? 

    The works "My Body, a Wunderkammer" by Shelley Jackson, and "Depression Quest" by Zoe Quinn fall into the vague category of digital interactive adventures. While far less common in today's culture, they were rather popular in rudimentary forms early in the internet. one such example being "Ted the Caver". The purpose of this genre of story is to balance several elements of interface design to immerse an individual into the work, and to give them a choice as if they were on an adventure.

    There are many complicated aspects to interface design, ways to draw the eyes and manipulate emotions. To truly excel at Interface design you have to be experienced at a wide variety of subjects including the workings of the mind. In my research I have summarized a complicated subject into the balance between two factors, story and activity. To balance these two factors many different aspects of ui design are either included or reduce in frequency.

    For example, a common way of engaging readers is via click navigation. Aside from not presenting all the information and making it easier for site owners to segment information, giving someone something to engage with. However too much of this can make parsing through information annoying, and the act of going back and forth between sections can drag a reader out of the information. To many interactable sacrifices the story your telling, but two few makes the project no different from reading a book. Both of the hypertexts use both large amounts of clickables for the 'value' of the story being told, but they use images and visuals to make both transitions more enjoyable and invoke the audience to visualize what is being said in more detail which alleviates this issue. The example I gave above focuses more on telling the story with less interactable but still immerses the reader. These ratios are different for each piece and specific works can also use audio and the like to tip that balance.

    As a person who enjoys writing more than visual presentation I will probably not engage as much with interactable. But to achieve that balance and immerse the audience I will use hidden text, music and other non-interactive peripherals to engage the audience. But that all depends on what story you are telling and the goal of your project.