Narrative Infusion in Web Design

This paper investigates the contribution of narrativised interface design to the overall narrative expressivity of this work. A close reading of the graphic interactive novel The Boat reveals the reliance on a narrativised interface throughout the experience. The narrativised interface increases the impact of the work, as the user’s navigation of the plot brings the story to life. The collaged visual presentation format both reinforces the story’s overall emotional tenor and focuses the user’s attention on the component micronarratives. This dynamic collage aesthetic creates a postmodernist artefact by mixing, sequencing, and superimposing media forms: illustrations, panels, text, photographs, and video. We argue that the narrativised interface elements intensify cognitive interactivity and increase immersion into the story as it unfolds. This narrative expressivity accentuates the perception of the storyworld. We also observe that the multi-mediated collage aesthetic bridges the digital and real worlds, leading to a hypermediated yet engaged experience. The work balances ambiguities and dualities - such as reality/imagination, photography/drawing, motion/still, sound/image. This unconventional and active interface design ruptures any passive reader experience. The resulting narrative texture supports an ongoing dialectic of immediacy and hypermediacy. This dialectic both draws the viewer into the ongoing story of The Boat, and highlights the work’s higher-level themes: the fragility of life and the solitary nature of survival in a threatening world.