This thesis titled 'Tracing the Journey of the World's Most Infamous Diamond: An Interactive Narrative on the Koh-i-Noor' by Shreya Balakrishnan has been approved for the degree of 'Master of Design' from the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. The final realization, deployed as a website with engaging interactive elements, will be shared online so that more people can experience the story of the Koh-i-Noor. The project proposes to communicate the story of the Koh-i-Noor diamond through a web-based interactive narrative in a well-deserved visual-rich approach to captivate a wider audience based on the book Koh-i-Noor : The Story of the World's Most Infamous Diamond.
Scope of Work
Project Timeline
Introduction to Digital Storytelling
Introduction to Digital Storytelling 2.2 Evolution of Storytelling Media
Interactive digital stories serve as an effective means of communicating information to audiences who prefer visuals over written words. Additionally, the interactivity layer plays an important role in engaging the audience in the digital storytelling experience. This multimedia story reinvented the view towards digital long-form articles, inspiring other media to create similar products making it popular among audiences.
Evolution of Storytelling Media
Interactive digital storytelling is becoming increasingly popular for storytelling in the categories of personal storytelling, dramatic historical event telling, journalism, or education.5,6,7 The New York Times' award-winning interactive feature, Snow Fall: The Avalance at Tunnel Creek (2012) is one such paradigmatic example of the powerful use of interactive elements in the form of animated photographs, interview videos and 3D animations to present a story. Video games also produced a variety of outputs, integrating storytelling, animation and interaction. As all these formats proliferate, it is only becoming much clearer that the origins of interactive digital storytelling lie in many areas, including games, film, storytelling, programming and animation.
Catalysts to the Inception of Digital Storytelling
For the purpose of this thesis, we will discover the key features of Web 2.0 that gave rise to the interactive narratives as we know them today. In a broader sense, the introduction of user-friendly Web 2.0 applications encouraged increased user involvement and engagement, enabling digital narratives to grow exponentially with each advancement in the web space. With the emergence of collaborative and communicative applications, Web 2.0 storytelling has reached more listeners and inspired more creators, while also providing a link between the two.2.
Narrative Structures
Case Studies
The journey of the Primus engine, seeking their goal with their all-consuming passion and the impossible challenges they face along the way, adds more character to the story. Point of view narratives are designed to tell the story through one's eyes and express their subjective opinions and personal experiences. In this literary structure, the feelings, moods and emotions of the story are filtered through the point of view of the narrator.
Rise of Non-Fiction Interactive Narratives
The site's visual style is minimal, with an overall washed-out effect to match the snowfall event. This allows the user to consume secondary information without interrupting the flow of the primary narrative. The media and images used on the site are treated with a sepia filter, which fits well with the theme of the story.
The website also uses audio output very wisely, thereby enhancing the experience of the narration. Bussed Out has a clean user interface where the text is laid out in the middle column of the page; and the visualizations and multimedia add color to the web page. The Sochi project is a long-form journalistic account of the summer capital of Sochi divided into 9 chapters.
The site's content covers the story of the summer capital, where no snow falls in the winter, being chosen as the venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics. However, the navigation bar, as a substitute for information-laden pages, provides the heart of the chapter. Since Snow Fall, various other industries and publications have released their own versions of the format.
The story of the summer capital, Russia being chosen as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
About the Book
About the Book 4.2 Target Audience
Target Audience
Detailed Project Brief
Content Analysis
Content Analysis 5.2 Design Approach
One such detail was the transfer of the diamond from Shah Shuja to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, which holds a lot of debatable perspectives. Some texts say that the diamond was bought by Raja Ranjit Singh, while some say that it was snatched, stolen or gifted by Shah Shuja. This was done with the intention of accommodating a use case where one might not have enough time to surf through all 9 chapters, in which case they would have something to take away even if they left after a short interaction with the website.
Design Approach
03 Data-driven storytelling approach that emphasizes facts Considering the time-driven historical timeline of the. Beyond just the data, analysis of the story revealed data, but it was not essential enough to drive the story. All these directions were further explored by outlining ideas for each to find the most appropriate approach to retell the Kohinoor story with value while doing justice to the medium of storytelling and the target audience.
Concepts
Theo Metcalfe's version of the Kohinoor history is considered one of the first pieces of documentation of the. Second, the authors of the book mention that Theo's anecdotes are incorrect in many places, which would again compromise the authenticity of the story. Using the non-linear storytelling approach, it was decided to explore how key events in the storyline could be used as a starting point to start the story and build the narrative flow around them.
The concept of creating an experience of the viewer entering the TGE can be recreated through the appeal of a virtual museum to retell the story of the Kohinoor with the help of an audio-visual guide that was conceived as a direction. This concept contemplated the possibilities for all owners of Koh-i-Noor to have a conversation among themselves, where each of them can bring to the table all the most important events of their time in focus. Summarizes the complete narrative with 30 odd questions and answers to give the reader an essence of the diamond's character.
This idea is based on the idea of providing the reader with a quick and accessible version of the story. The goal was to formulate 30 powerful questions whose answers would reveal most of the contributing events. Along the way, several other concepts were explored and revised, such as adopting a data-driven approach, overlaying the timeline along the geographic path, the story of the dynasty that owned it, and also the diamond's value in terms of the powerful statements made in response.
However, these concepts were rejected at an earlier stage of the validation and evaluation sessions themselves for various reasons.
Final Concept
Final Concept 6.2 Visualisation
Interactions and Animations
The motive behind this part of the interactive was to enable a reader-driven approach to the story, where the user has control over which part of the story they want to consume. The first step in this phase was to label the prepared narrative content based on the nature of the event. This exercise yielded 6 tags/filters: Ownership change, Public appearance, Curse of the Diamond, Koh-i-Noor is missing, The.
Although the 'chronological' scale would also have been suitable, it was rejected due to the needs of the use case. Variations of the shortlisted timelines were explored for the theme of the narrative based on diamonds. After finalizing the overall shape of the index, the final step was to encode the dataset variables onto the visualization.
Based on all decision making decisions at this stage, the final visualization of the visual index was developed. The details and features of the visual index are presented in the upcoming sections of the document. The primary component of the interactive, scrolling narrative section, divided into 9 chapters, where the user will be able to read the entire story of the diamond.
Another notable feature of the timeline was the bar-shaped slider icon, which.
Visualisation Design
The website uses icons or images sparingly, as it is primarily text and multimedia driven. As mentioned, many texts in the story did not have corresponding or supporting visual sources, in which case photo editing was relied on to come up with visuals. Various techniques were used to achieve the desired result, such as merging two different images to form one image, overlaying images, emphasizing part of an image to bring focus to the event being narrated , and much more.
Moreover, it was very challenging to maintain the overall aesthetics of the site, as the story of the Koh-i-Noor spans centuries. The initial chapters of the narrative depend on Mughal paintings, slowly transitioning to black and white photographs, while the final chapters use high-quality videos and photographs. To counter the inconsistency in footage that can arise from this varying pool, color overlays and photo editing have been adopted.
This would help to later make this responsive for other digital devices such as tablets and smartphones.
Execution and Prototyping
When hovering, nodes display their notes on the visualization, and clicking on them directs the user to the appropriate narrative event. 01 Most of the set, 85% were able to comfortably navigate the storytelling section and intuitively interact with the elements. Different versions of the visual index section of the website have been addressed to combat the difficulties users face in understanding and comprehension.
The landing page of the interactive website greets the user with a short introduction to the topic and adapts the user to the concept of the website. This section illustrates the salient features and details of the interactive narrative using a few key screens, from both the visual index and role-narrative components. When the user selects a specific tag at the bottom of the screen, they will see all the nodes (events) related to that tag and a list of those events on the right side of the screen.
CHAPTER-TO-CHAPTER NAVIGATION The reader can access any chapter of the narrative by clicking on the indicators on the timeline. Different narrative slides use animations to drive the story and support the text. HORIZONTAL SCROLL A few sections of a site with horizontal scrolling where each scroll reveals supporting information or visuals related to the event.
Consider an alternative representation for the color-coded powered visual index component of the interactive. 04 Expanding the source of the narrative beyond the book to include other parallel stories to introduce a wider perspective to the story. 29 Candy, "Review of 'Koh-i-Noor: The Story of the World's Most Infamous Diamond'." GoodReads, 18 Oct.
