Someone Else's Story: An Ethical Approach to Interactive Narrative Design for Cultural Heritage

摘要

This paper outlines an approach to community based co-design of interactive narrative (IN) cultural heritage experiences, based on the author's development of an advanced-level project course on the topic over the past six years. Several projects are discussed as case studies, including projects that address the history of Irish immigrants working as domestic laborers in Troy NY in the 1850s; urban renewal in Albany NY and Troy NY in the 1960s and 1970s; the Native American nations' Iroquois Confederacy in present-day Cohoes NY; and the upstate New York history of Harriet Tubman, the legendary African American liberator of hundreds of enslaved people during the 1850s and 1860s. Issues highlighted include the ethics of telling other people's stories in the IN medium, the myth of the designer as impartial facilitator, the power structures of different types of design processes, and complexities of large scale projects that incorporate emergent technology, contested histories, and a wide range of stakeholders and participants. Lessons learned are shared in the form of a set of guidelines to help shape design and development of interactive narrative projects in educational, museum, and heritage settings.