Critique on the “Role of Music in Your Life” Questionnaire found here:
Well, this was weird. I found it a waste of my time really. The questionnaire/story is on the website for a free literary magazine from Hamish Hamilton. Per the website, “Hamish Hamilton is one of London’s oldest publishing houses, founded by Jamie Hamilton in 1931.” When you go to the Experiments page of the website you will find the link which takes you to the Questionnaire. The first page of the questionnaire says the following:
“This is Five Dials Experiments. This is the spot where we test out new forms of storytelling.
This is where you’ll find the results of our collaborations with interesting designers around the world.
Our first experiment — the one you’re about to read — was designed in partnership with our friends at Present Plus in Amsterdam.
What is it? It’s a questionnaire. But don’t ask too many questions. The subject is music. That’s about all you need to know.”
Did I mention yet that I found this whole experience weird, oh right, I did. So the experience is in a bit of an adaptive questionnaire format. Similar to the mountain rescue simulation I reviewed in a previous post. In other words, the next question you are asked occasionally seemed like it depended on your previous answer. But a lot of the time the answer choices were very limited, and it was clear the story was going in a certain direction whether you liked it or not. I didn’t like this, thanks for asking.
But once again, I think this format of storytelling has a lot of potential, it just needs to be better executed. There must be better examples of such adaptive storytelling programs out there. And rather than spending any more time writing about this one I didn’t like, I am going to try to find one I do like.
Well, I spent a lot of time trying to find a better program, but I had no success. But I did find a bunch of other cool tools and programs for generating digital stories. One of the programs I came upon was storybird.com where you can use professional artists’ drawings to create a children’s book. I found this very challenging, but fun to get in touch with my inner child again. You can see my book here: