This study is a qualitative assessment of Design Fiction as narrative and diegetic conventions meant to show the relationship to the broader scope and underpinnings of the relationship. It postulates a causality of the relation of narrative or storytelling conventions within everyday life including gaming and game-based learning to the development of future shared mental models. In particular, it is an examination of design fiction as a practice to create fictional scenarios that engage and explore future concepts and diegesis which is the game's total world of narrative actions (Iacovides, Cox, Kennedy, Cairns, & Jennett, 2015). The diegetic objects explored include diegetic user interfaces, diegetic prototyping, and diegetic interactions. This study uses Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) mechanics as the means to investigate this relationship and how user interfaces (UI) are adapting to help provide the next generation gaming and game-based learning (GBL).
How does the use of Design Fiction and the diegetic conventions help shape future shared mental models?
With the advancement of VR, AR and MR traditional UI metaphors are adapting at a rapid pace. Two types of UI conventions that need to adapt are diegetic UI and non-diegetic UI along with their relationship to narrative conventions - in this case, Design Fiction.
Design Fiction is a type of storytelling that blurs the boundaries between traditional design practices and narrative explorations of potential futures (Tanenbaum, Tanenbaum, & Wakkary, 2012). The use of Design Fiction as a narrative is to use speculations, metaphors, and explorations of desired futurities to explicate and inform material design practices (Tanenbaum, Tanenbaum, & Wakkary, 2012). Design fiction has been associated with science fiction and popular culture as a means to address design in futuristic states that do not exist. This poses challenges to the designer but also to the shared mental model of conventions that exist now.
Diegetic (or in-game) UI is “an interface that is included in the game world”, which is seamlessly included in the game world together with characters in the virtual world, background, props, and sounds (Seo & Bae, 2018). This type of UI helps with immersion, engagement, and flow which are key components of Gameplay and game-based learning. The design of the game mechanics needs to account for how the user interface can aid in allowing for these elements to happen. Non-diegetic UI, on the other hand, refers to a typical UI that is “rendered outside the game world, only visible and audible to the players in the real world (Seo & Bae, 2018). This type of convention can disrupt the immersion, engagement, and flow of the interaction requiring the user to be removed from the game and the ability to advance certain narratives.
A natural outcropping of the relationship between Design Fiction and Diegesitic UIs is diegetic prototyping. The Diegetic UI within VR, AR, and mixed reality helps propel design into new and exciting futures. Diegetic prototyping is about focusing on what could be versus what is already. This will help to shape and evolve shared mental models around future conventions.
This type of research is more than a single study and is a future research practice. That practice would focus on design fiction as a narrative tool for engaging in advancing mental models centered around Experience Design. This design practice would focus on the development of a series of mixed-method experiments through diegetic prototyping as a design methodology. This methodology will need to be participatory design centered on speculative design thinking and all forms of collaboration.
By focusing on Design Fiction and Diegetic prototyping the advancement of immersive technologies like VR, AR and MR will make diegetic user interfaces shape future mental models of interaction and become ubiquitous to everyday life. Their general usage and subsequent studies for the advancement within the gaming industry and within education with game-based learning will advancing these shared mental models. The use of design fiction will provide engagement and constructs to continue to shape these future speculative concepts.
Design fiction futures don't have to be dystopian science fiction.
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