“How are you different from…?”
That’s a question we are often asked in our conversations. We re-tweak our site message and PR, but, it’s still a fair question, particularly, when the field of AI conversational agents (“bots”) has been around for awhile and seems a bit stale. That said, we do feel there are Companies doing innovative work with “site agents” who now can streamline a User’s experience in navigating a site, etc., and those are great to see.
But, back to the question — How are we different?
An analogy would be the movie LAST ACTION HERO, where a boy from the “real world” jumps into a movie. Then, later, the “character” from the movie, comes out to the real world. Most AI conversational agents and technology tries to simulate a ‘character’ being a helper or guide in the “real world.”
Here, our interactive story experiences utilize artificial intelligence and interactive writing to bring the “real world User” into the movie (which is the “story”). “Story” controls the shape and experience. And, like a movie, our stories are generally created in Acts, where the AI character has an internal motivation to guide the “real person” to get to the end of the Act, and, then to proceed into the next Act. Simultaneously, we’ve brought the “story” into the real world, put it in the User’s hands (mobile)…thereby, converging the two spaces.
For Brands, this means their message and purpose is more readily accomplished.
For “real people,” the Users, it is a chance to “step into the movie and become part of the adventure.” After all, isn’t that the purpose of “story?” To transport a Person into an experience they want to be engaged and participate?
In summary, our “characters” are not passive, backed up by a database of answers (though, they have that database), but, they are pro-active, in guiding the interactive experience.
24 October 2009
iPad, eLearning, Interactive Stories and Narrative Experiences
Because nearly every conversation for the past 3 days has circled around to the iPAD, these are our early thoughts:
* It’s wonderful, but it’s limited. It is a digital content consumption tool, with very limited abilities for Users to create anything…particularly, anything original.
* We miss APPLE’s early efforts to get digital creation tools into the hands of the Masses. iMovie, Garage Band and the early compatibility and processing kick for Photoshop were all wonderful (After Effects, morphing tools, etc. etc., going back to the early ’90′s). It would be great to see an iPAD+ that could run programs, not just apps.
* That said, iPAD Apps can incorporate our interactive narrative platform as a component or feature, which encourages the User to be ‘textually creative,’ where we bridge the conversational content to the images (in both directions). We’re reaching out to App developers to see about how we can best integrate with their needs in order to allow the User to be more engaged and creative from their side.
The prospects for eLearning and Children’s entertainment content seems most natural to explore — during this early version of personal tablet devices — where we add-value through the Users ability to personalize and change elements within storied experiences through conversation.
Rush out and buy one? Tempted. But, not enough to head to the store…
5 April 2010