Storytelling through data
A workshop by Paul Rissen
User Experience helps you understand your users, so you can provide the right content, and help smooth access to it. Information Architecture helps you structure your content, so users can find it.
But a good information architecture is only the beginning. Restricting your users to one single path through your content is limiting, and can lead to major frustration. Not all journeys through your content are the same. How do you get the most out of structured data, whilst allowing a world of possible journeys on top of those foundations?
In this workshop, we’ll use traditional storytelling techniques to plot out the stories you might like your users to tell with your content. You’ll learn how to leverage the power of structured data and semantic technologies to combine these stories with your information architecture, and how to unleash the creativity, magic, and even alchemy, inherent in your data.
Outline
- Setting the Scene: An Introduction to Shakespearean Five Act Structures
- Storyboarding your User Journeys through Story Beats
- Using Semantic Tagging to Link Story Beats to your Information Architecture
- Telling Stories to your Computers
- Next Steps
Paul Rissen
Paul Rissen is a Data Architect for BBC News Online. He was a Graduate Consultant with Siemens from 2006-2008, during which time he was responsible for the data modelling of BBC iPlayer in the run up to its’ launch. Paul then joined BBC Audio & Music in late 2008, working with the /programmes platform team, and shortly moved on to work with the User Experience & Design team on projects across TV, Radio, Knowledge & Learning, GEL and News. He has contributed to a number of the BBC’s data models and ontologies, including the Curriculum Ontology and Storyline.
Since 2008, Paul has been investigating, developing and writing on the theme of narratives and technology. He worked with the BBC’s R&D; department on the Mythology Engine (2009-10) project, secured funding and co-directed the Storybox (2011) prototype, developed the Stories Ontology (2010) in close collaboration with academic partners, and has championed the cause of linked data & the semantic web, particularly in the field of narrative and drama, inside and outside the BBC. He spoke at EuroIA 2013 on the subject of ‘Information Architecture as a Creative Practice’.
