Narrative Apps

To get a clear idea of what does and does not work well in an interactive story app, I downloaded some onto my Ipad and tried them out. Here are a few of them that I have analysed further.

Goodnight Safari

This is an interactive narrative app about animals that could be found on safari, the reader is first met by a title page which gives them options of "pick a page" "read to me" and "read alone" along with "new games" and the option to turn the sound on or off. As the structure to the book is linear Im unsure about the need for the pick a page button as this is only useful if the story is very long or if the user does not have the ability to move onto the next page without the whole animation being played which can be frustrating and make the user feel the app is slow. The other options on this page about reading alone or being read to are very effective as having the choice of a voice over is essential especially for this age range.

As you can see from the pictures above the text is in a hand drawn style which stands out well against the background, however if any of the backgrounds were to be lighter than this one, the text may become hard to read. I feel it would have been safer to have a background on the text or place it in a box to make sure it is clearly visible all of the time. This app does not let the user move onto another page without completing the entire task, this makes the pace of the app feel very slow, and almost boring. I think the app would have benefitted from letting its users choose which parts to do rather than put in a restriction. However, the button that does come up to show the user that section is finished is good as it makes the viewer aware they have more missed anything important on the page. This app overall looks very appealing but the restrictions put in by the inability to move through the app freely are a real down point, making the app frustrating and boring to play with. 

Timmy Tickle

Timmy Tickle is an app for parents to share with their toddlers, when you first open the app you are greeted by Timmy, the orange octopus who is brightly coloured and does not sit still for very long which is great for holding a young ones attention.

When you click on the "play" button on the first screen you are then taken to this one, this menu page gives the options for the parents to choose from, here they can select autoplay which will simply play all of the animations through with sound to let the child enjoy effortlessly. The next option is sound, this option will play the animations when it hears noise encouraging the child to interact with the app even if they can not yet speak. The final option on this page is voice, this option allows the parents to record their own voice so the child recognises it and interacts more with the app. All of these options are very useful and have opened the app up to cater for a wider audience than if it was  a simple book and this is what is important when making an interactive narrative app, it needs to be more beneficial that buying a book, otherwise it is pointless to own.

Above you can see the last bit of navigation in this app, in the top right hand corner, there is a home icon. When the icon is clicked you are faced with the sentence "hold for menu" as you hold the button down, you are then taken back to the home page. This is a very cleaver feature for the app to have as the chances of a small child or toddler bashing and tapping all over the screen are high and if the app simply let touch take you back to the menu the parents would be forever having to reselect options to get back to this point. Overall this app is very simple and clean but it is very well thought out and through decluttering the navigation, the result is a very parent and child friendly app which is more effective than its book counterpart.