The brief.
This piece of writing reflects on the process of creating our final project in the course - an interactive Twine experience for art students.
The design.
The design of our project was inspired mainly by Woolgar’s (1990) observations of the ways in which users are configured not only by their tools and technologies, but by the instructions that go with them. We were interested in finding ways of undermining the idea of user configuration by both bringing it out into the open and by finding ways for users to bend and break those configurations. We initially wanted to rope these ideas in with the idea of the way spaces also configure in how we approach, especially, arts education. We wanted to use a 3D tool to create a world to walk through and to explore, create, destroy, succeed and fail within. Ultimately, due to time, ability, and resource constraints we chose Twine, though Erin worked out a way to bring a 3D Sketchup model into Twine, which was amazing.
My role.
I got the group together around a common theme near the beginning of the course knowing I would have a hard semester with time management and wanting to jump ahead. I was involved along the way in defining the problem we would solve (initially, failure as a problem preventing students taking risks and exploring in arts education) and in ideating on the design, which was unclear for some time. I was also helpful in coming up with tools to use and in describing their affordances to help us make appropriate selections. I had a lull while I moved and started a new job but re-joined again in the creation of three of the eight Twine activities (1, 2, and 6)/the instructions in the user guide and in constantly communicated via Slack with my team. I did a lot of additional research for my three passages focusing on the configuring nature of art pedagogies, specifically and coming up with ways to play with their ideas as almost meta-theories (Deleuze!).
Usability and user configuration.
The usability of the tool is very straightforward as a set of basic linked interactions that are consistently formatted and easily clickable. The Twine is linear in its configuration as well for ease of use (often numbered). We focused users’ attention on the ways we verbally articulated the experience of being configured to users while they were simultaneously invited to play with or reject our ideas. The tension between the linear, textual, configuring format of the tool, its self-awareness, and the invitation to users to really think about how art is being made through it, made the tool able to hold attention as users engage with it through their own attentional frameworks (Citton, 2017).
What worked and what didn’t.
While the tool works well for its intended purpose, I think it might have been interesting to also manipulate the Twine to reflect the exploratory nature of the art-making process more strongly and break out of its linear, textual mold (that the tool configures). This would have required more ability and skill-building on our part to push the affordances of Twine in terms of its path-making and media hosting capabilities.
What I learned and what I would change.
II learned a lot of new things that Twine is capable of such as randomizers and a different approach to CSS (I’ve used the tool a lot but I always learn something new each time I use it). I had no idea Sketchup would integrate so well (and a massive applause to Erin for figuring that out). I’d have changed the nature of some of my Twine passages to rely less on textual modes of communication and more on auditory or visual elements.
References.
Citton, Y. (2017). The ecology of attention. Polity Press.
Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. The Sociological Review, 38(1, Suppl.), 58-99.