The Sisyphean

Created by Sevgi Tan, Kris Vabalas, Robin de Haan, Yujin Choi and Tijmen Buskermolen.

By scrolling through the website of the Sisyphean the user has to pick up clues from anywhere to understand the underlaying narrative. Clues hidden in design, interaction and most imporantly; the content. By presenting itself through other recognizable design, The Sisyphean fools their audience, they are unknowing in the fact that it’s something completely different than what it’s (re)presenting to be.

By combining both interactive and static mediums, which are presented in an interactive way, it provides a lot of options for the users. They can take their time with understanding the narrative, find it out on their own pace and in their own way.

Greenwashing

Created by Georgina Henry, Meeuwis Aalberts and Tijmen Buskermolen.

By walking to a physical installation the user is greeted with a poster asking them to participate in a gesamtkunstwerk, giving clear instructions how they have to do this. But while the user gets these instructions, they’re still unknown about the actual intentions and narrative. This installation uses this role to provide an element of surprise, to convey a larger realization from the audience while communicating the narrative. By giving the users a tangible task and a tangible souvenir they feel more involved in the narrative and (hopefully) see the issue of greenwashing through a more personal perspective.

Unknowing

The audience is unknowing in the sense that they are not aware of context, content and interaction. This can differ in their general (intrinsic, explicit & tacit) knowledge and interests; how much they are aware of certain spectacles. As a designer you can still design things in a way that won’t connect to the audiences general knowledge at first sight. By not giving away a lot of information beforehand through content, visual design and interaction you can delay the audiences realization of what your narrative is about. This can be used to create elements of surprise, which can provide more engagement and stronger reactions.

User

In this context a user is defined in the sense that someone interacts with something, not that it will necessarily fulfill a need that this person has. The user is someone who is presented with information in a linear or non-linear path, presented in a way that is both defined by the designer and in the way in which the user will interact. This will make the experience different for every user based on their input, but the designer still has the first hand in how different these experiences actually can be. Next to that the experiences between users can also differ through their general (intrinsic, explicit & tacit) knowledge, general interests and their willingness to interact. Interactivity can be used to give a lot of freedom to the user, or can be designed in a more static structure which will provide less options. The user’s willingness to interact depends on the threshold of the interactivity, the designer has to keep their user group and which actions they’re likely to perform in mind.