Xenosomatics: Alien time đź‘˝
Group members 🤝: Tiana Robison, Sylvester Liu, Luchen Peng and Me
Task: Create a 20 minute ritual in the alien world for the class to experience digitally.
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We jumped on a Zoom call and discussed ideas for the project. Immediately what jumped out to me is that we should make the fact we are online a main part of the ritual. Seeing people on Zoom actually reminds me of being a head in a jar, as that’s the view we have of others in Zoom calls.
My group liked the idea and we got to initial research. We all had many ideas for the way this could work, so we wrote out our ideas and then combined several parts from each to create a final version:
You have been saved by a friendly alien species from a doomed existence on Earth. In this experience you will be guided through uploading your consciousness so that you can live on virtually, ending the ritual by celebrating your new virtual life.
We had a tutorial with Susan to discuss our ideas and she helped us in several ways. She made us aware that we need to think of clear steps that we want our users to go through, so they wouldn’t get confused. Additionally, we wanted a way to make the player feel light, or weightless in the beginning phase. She suggested that tensing and relaxing muscles from head to toe could simulate this, so we decided to try it.
First rendition.
We split the experience into two parts: the ritual and the celebration.
The ritual consists of guiding participants through an “uploading” process, where they are being transformed into virtual beings. We play audio with the aliens speaking (from a text-to-speech generator), instructing the players, along with sound effects (carefully configured by Tiana) to make the player aware of their progress. It guides players through several steps involving objects (a blanket and a glass of water), so that they can be synced to the uploading system.
The celebration consists of congratulating everyone and introducing them to their new world whilst playing celebratory music.
Play test.
On Thursday, we were able to test our initial idea with another group. We guided them through the experience, after which they were able to give us feedback.
They noted that they really enjoyed it, however, they didn’t feel like they had enough time to imagine their character at the beginning, and that the ending was too abrupt. Also, they felt a little lost with some of the instructions so they suggested a visual depicting what they needed to do would be helpful.
Final.
We listened to the feedback and changed some things. The beginning was extended to allow time for imagination, and I drew up a visual to help with instruction.
We worked hard to fix the ending, which we completely re-wrote. We changed the storyline from us being helpful aliens, to having an ulterior motives:
In the story we are a formless alien species, jealous of beings that have tangible bodies. Our goal in the Larp was to trap the participating humans and steal their bodies by uploading them into Zoom — a system that we wrote we created by us with this exact purpose.
To not end the experience on a bad note, we added a communal element at the end where one of our team members acts as the “good” alien, asking everyone to knock a certain rhythm as the same time to escape. This triggers a feedback sound which lets the player know they have escaped, after which celebratory music is played.
Feedback.
Our classmates said that by integrating the limitations of zoom into the experience, this made it diegetic, enabling us to overcome these limits. The generated voice and sound elements made for a real and immersive experience, and that we were able to change the story from meditative to sinister well. The group that we tested the experience on noted that we had overcome the problems they mentioned, especially in developing the ending.
However, they felt we should have followed up more on the evil twist — that we moved on to saving them too quickly. Also, the muscle syncing part in the uploading could have been more unique, as tensing and untensing was a bit generic.
Next time I would love to develop the ending even further, playing with the evil twist aspect and incorporating more of the creepy dystopian humour that we started to build up.
Final thoughts.
At the beginning of the week, I had a lot of questions regarding how to connect the dots between Larp and UX. The experience that I had collaborating with others to create this unique experience helped me understand that from a UX lense, Larp is used to simulate and prototype different ways of being. It can be a rapid prototyping process, bringing in Somatics to help with various technological advancements. However, perhaps more importantly, it is also the study of how you, as a designer, can help facilitate good experiences.
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References.
- Nordic Larp Talks Stockholm 2010, 2011. Introduction to Nordic Larp — Johanna Koljonen. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH_RLgR4DI4&feature=emb_logo> [Accessed 25 January 2021].
- Future of StoryTelling, 2016. Bjarke Pedersen — Becoming The Story (FoST 2016). [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuT88CnQ4xY> [Accessed 25 January 2021].
- Sanders, L. and Stappers, P.J., 2014. From designing to co-designing to collective dreaming: three slices in time. interactions, 21(6), pp.24–33.
