Planning Your Navigable Space

1
Planning Your Navigable Space

• Week 4
• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media
• Spring 2005
• Janet H. Murray

2
Project ICreate a Navigable Space

• Week 4 submit and present a map of the space
• Week 5 submit and present space itself
• clear navigational cues to script the
  interactor
• consistent, logical space
• a reason to move through it
• at least 5 separate segments or rooms
• at least 3 objects with behavior within the
  space

3
Planning Project I

• What are the 5 rooms ?
• How do I move between them?
• Why would I move between them?
• How will I know where I am?
• How will I know where I can move to?
• What are the three objects in the rooms that have
  behavior?
• What do they do, and under what condition do they
  do it?

4
Experiencing Space

• Codes of relationship
• Left / Right
• In front of / Behind
• Forward / Back
• Landmarking
• Zones of proximity (Downtown the South)
• Pathfinding (2 stops on MARTA Mapquest
  directions)

5
Representating Space Overview
6
Overviews

• Provide sense of boundaries and extent of space
• Provide relationship of parts to the whole
• From a gods eye (birds eye) perspective
• Sitemaps and good site navigation provide
  overview of information spaces
• Establishing shots, zooms in film provide
  overview prelude to smaller scene create
  illusion of proximities
• Digital media can create overviews that can be
  entered and navigated

7
Representing Space Navigation

• Navigation produces sense of immersion
• Space seems more real because you can move
  through it
• Space must be consistent
• Logically Retraceable (up/down, left/right)
• In scale (lower floors matched to upper floors)
• Landmarks support orienteering

8
Coherent navigation leads to exploration and
discovery

• Passing a tripwire can set off a dramatic
  effect
• Room abstraction useful even for spaces that
  are not rooms, such as mazes, forest, any logical
  space segment
• Glimpsing one space from another, or
  hearing/smelling something just out of sight,
  creates anticipation
• Sounds can become louder as you approach
• Hidden objects can become more, or suddenly
  visible

9
Creating Motivation for Exploration

• Placing objects in the space reinforces the
  illusion
• Following a fleeing character (White Rabbit) can
  motivate navigation, discovery
• Spaces and objects can be taken from familiar
  story genres treasure boxes, outlaw hideout,
  alien space ship
• Story expectations from props and characters,
  sound and visual style create anticipation,
  suspense, curiosity

10
Geographical Space as Cultural Code

• East Coast, West Coast
• Beltway (Washington)
• The South, the Midwest
• (other countries have similar shorthand)
• Valley of the Shadow of Death
• Underworld of the Dead
• Mountaintop or Celestial habitation of the gods
• (in multiple religious traditions)

11
Space as Emotional Code

• Choice as a fork in the road or a crossroads
• Despair as a forest (Dantes inferno)
• Being confused as being lost at sea
• Drowning as being overwhelmed out of his depth
• Walking the straight and narrow moral
  orientation for spatial orientation