Feb 1, 2008
The psychological effectiveness of classic tales narrative structure is a model we can follow when building hypertext layout and design, focusing on navigation, performance and usability.
The Arabian tales “One Thousand and One Nights” are believed to have their origins in the 9th century A.D., and were later collected and translated into western culture by Antoine Galland in the 17th century. The tales comprise 12 volumes and feature a series of intertwined stories, that is, one story evokes another, which in turn tells yet another, and so forth.
The psychological effectiveness of such narrative structure is something we can use for designing a good website
We may as well say it was one of the first works to consistently employ links within a document, that is, the first hypertext.
Another interesting aspect of the “One Thousand and One Nights” is the fact that its characters are always one-sided, meaning they are fully replaceable by the action they represent. Their deeds follow a circular, predictable cause and effect system: they kill because they are cruel, they are cruel because they kill, they are good and wise because they help others, and they help because they are good and wise.
The narrative of the “One Thousand and One Nights” is impersonal, and therefore typical of a genuine tale frame, its characters portrayed only as representations of mental states, absolutely plain and hollow, ready to serve as vehicles to an idea.
The psychological effectiveness of such narrative structure is something we can use for designing a good website, focusing on navigation performance and usability. It is a template to be followed when building a layout, a design with hypertext features.
As the users enter the website’s mesh, all the other surrounding contents are deemed, by comparison, indisputable products of reality. Icons, menus, text and navigation frames, everything must be taken in by the users, thus creating a mental model which they recognize and accept as true, something they don’t have to fight but are able to interact with.
Fantastic narratives aim at inducing terror, fright or suspense on the reader. On the other hand, fairy tales such as the ones in the “One Thousand and One Nights” depict supernatural characters and incidents which are not meant to leave the readers on their toes, as terror or detective stories do, but to peacefully guide them through the extraordinary so they traverse the plot in a half-believing state of mind. Planting the seed of doubt or suspicion in the readers is a necessary requisite of the fantastic literature; it is what carries them forward.
Design, likewise, should follow a similar structure to those employed in fantastic narratives, quietly leading users through the new and different world before them, making them curious, eager to get more information, eager to go on.
