Next steps on the reader journey

When I last blogged about working out how readers will journey through my HayleyWorld zoeography, I was pondering how to:

• personalise a reader's journey while still retaining an element of authorial control
• make sure that readers can take different paths through the narrative and still read/experience something that feels like a coherent story
• enable readers to feel like they're getting to know William Hayley in a way that mimics encountering him in real life.

A few months on, I'm still thinking about those issues – and suspect I'll continue to do so until the work's complete, I've post-mortemed myself almost to death over it*, and am on to the next big project†.

I'm also thinking about my methodology of designing the reader journey in a step-by-step linear way.
Given that I'm trying to make the reading experience feel less linear, is designing it in a linear manner, well, wrong? One aspect that concerns me is that it increases the likelihood that  I'll end up losing something – a key aspect of William Hayley's story – en route. Or that I'll miss a vital left turn, one that would allow me and the reader to explore aspects of the tale that my let's-start-at-the-very-beginning approach obscures.

This is where I'm at:

Will need to do page set up: A3 if I want to travel any further…

As for content - I'm halfway through editing/writing the personalised letters Hayley will send to his readers, and am thinking through what and how he'll "ask" readers to provide the information required for Form 2: as I write I'm wondering if this might also be a good point to ask readers for their email address…

My suspicion is that, for now, step-by-step is the most practical way to proceed. It won't be for much longer, though. My guess is that when I'm one or two stages further into the journey, and these stages have been successfully (I hope) implanted into the next iteration of the HayleyWorld app, I'll need to sit down with several huge pieces of paper and map out the various relationships between the people, places, themes and chronologies of the story, and interrelate these to each other. Which will probably make my head pop open like this, but will also make me feel considerably less smiley…

And which is where everything I'm learning by blogging my way through Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist is likely to come in handy…


Very interested to hear others' thoughts on reader journey design…



* Yeah, I know. Am invoking the paradox defence.
† on the backburner are

• an anarchist musical
• a radio drama 
• a crowd-sourced online project exploring the limits of kindness.

Reader journeys

One of the most difficult aspects of making HayleyWorld to get my head round has been imagining and designing the possible reader journeys through the text. How can we (my development partner & I)

• personalise a reader's journey while still retaining an element of control?
• make sure that readers can take different paths through the narrative and still read/experience something that feels like a coherent narrative?
• make readers feel like they're getting to know William Hayley in a away that mimics encountering him in real life?

I'm still near the start of the reader journey design process, but I have a start point that Contentment are in the process of implementing for our first prototype (which should be ready within the next couple of weeks).

At the moment, the idea looks like this:

As you can see, I still have questions about how much content to deliver before giving readers a chance to either choose more, or move on to another topic. But how will they get there in the first place?

It took me a while to work out how the app should start. But then I realised that it should begin in the way that William Hayley characteristically began his relationships with friends.

So, I embarked on my first element of semi-fictionalisation. I edited together – mostly from phrases/lines Hayley actually used, but with a few of my own (mostly obvious) tweaks  – a Hayleyan letter and sonnet, addressed to the reader…

"The past

Sussex

My dear Friend

Please allow me the liberty of addressing you thus as, I believe I have reason to hope, such you will soon become. Having some important Topics I wish to share with you, I have thrown them into here, and entreat your acceptance of the following history, that you may peruse at the greatest Ease to yourself.

Before you begin, I would beg you to look on my peculiarities with affectionate indulgence and I hope only that what follows may be thought worthy of you to whom I have taken the liberty of addressing it.

Ever your affectionate

WHayley

SONNET

Kind Friend! who reads in far off future years,

I pray thy generous heart will care to know,

A poet who lov’d to laugh yet oft shed tears

And wishes this – his story – to bestow.

Accept this volume:- through these pages flow

Sincere effusions of a long-passed mind!

Herein the untold truths my heart will shew,

Of artists, poets, friends and loves combin'd!

In this fair copy may thy eyes discern

The turns of mortal life herein outlin'd:

Whate'er the lessons from these words we learn

May all their blessings in you be entwin’d!

Thine be that joy which Friendship's bosom fills;

And thine eternal peace, devoid of ills!"

 That's the beginning that every reader will see. But then how to set each one off on their particular journey?

My initial plan was to give them a long form at the beginning. But my research into how people develop and sustain relationships led me to realise that this would be wrong. I need to create the illusion of conversation, which has two main implications.

• the reader needs to be asked for smaller tranches of information about themselves at various (but not too many) points in the app
• to have any chance of creating and sustaining the illusion that readers are getting to know William Hayley, they couldn't just be given a series of impersonal forms to complete. He would need to ask them questions. And would need to do so in an entirely Hayleyan manner…

So I wrote this. It is, I think, is more fun than an impersonal form, and has the advantage of allowing for "conversation" between Hayley and the reader without the reader being able to ask the sort of questions that an app will be unable to answer…

Also, given that the act of exploring HayleyWorld means readers are taking an interest in William Hayley, isn't it only right and proper that he should show an interest in them?