Readers' Responses to Hyperfictions
by students of Engl 304: Literary Computing, November 20th 2007
Readings are of Twelve Blue (link to fiction) and Waves of Girls (link to fiction) | Summary of comments
The comments below were written during a class session; they have not been edited
Twelve Blue, by Michael Joyce
1. Cat McDonald observing Jon Berry
Jon started by mousing over every image on the page, particularly the banner ads for other hypertexts and the company logo, possibly in search of some kind of Easter egg. He then clicked "begin" and, as the link told him to, began.
At the very beginning of the exploration, he seemed overwhelmed by the blueness of the layout, singing "Blue" by Eiffel 65 for a few seconds before becoming bored with his joke and proceeding to the first node. He examined all the images very closely, particularly the thread image.
From the very first node, Jon was fascinated by the colourful sidebar at the page's left hand side. He began to concentrate more on this image than on the text itself, which he seemed to parse only briefly before finding a place to click and proceeding to the next node. Jon became annoyed at the failure of the coloured lines to connect properly as he progressed through the story, and as he watched this, he noticed the end of the image and began to associate it with the end of the story.
Jon found several hidden links by highlighting text, but did not seem to have any contextual expectations, at least not enough to be either satisfied or dissatisfied. He said later that he did not exactly read the lexia very closely, at least not closely enough to determine any congruity or incongruity between them. He seemed a little surprised by the impressionist painting, but grew frustrated with it as it repeatedly turned up in what he called an infinite loop. Also, he complained about "the world's longest run-on sentence."
After parsing the nodes and getting tired of the infinite loops, he became more concerned with trying to put the story back together in its proper order, using the sidebar as a guideline. Every time, however, he would be stuck in a recursion and have to start again. At this point, he was no longer really reading the text, and considering it more as a puzzle to be reassembled than a text to be read or studied. When asked again whether or not the lexia were satisfying his expectations, he jokingly replied that they were "more perplexia than lexia", and said that they were confusing.
Around the fifth time that he became stuck in the loop involving the impressionist painting, he expressed a need for a wider screen. At this point, his clicking through the story was so rapid that a given node only remained for a few seconds.
Soon, Jon became distracted by another site, and viewed it for a while rather than continue trying to reassemble Twelve Blue. Later, he asked me to note in my observations that the cause of the infinite loop was a broken link that needed to be repaired.
After several minutes, he waded back into the text, but again found himself "more concerned with the technical details of the story than with the story itself". When he finally found a link that led somewhere, his screen had been filled with colourful sidebars, and he couldn't manage to read it. It is obvious that the sidebars, which indicate the sections of the story, draw attention to the technical pieces of the story and the fact that it is fragmented, and away from the story's content. They seemed to be Jon's biggest stumbling block.
2. Janelle Johnson observing Kayla Fedor
She began on number 1 because it seemed like a logical decision. This link was expected to have the story begin at the beginning. There was only 1 hyperlink on the first page. Hyperlink is not at the end, which seemed strange, go back to read link again before clicking it. Definitely did not meet expectations since the stories did not seem to connect. Third screen, there is still only one link to choose, so no real choice. Fourth page caused her to click back to he last one to catch the connection, going from dream to dream. Link from fourth lexia to next is just 3 dots which led to a picture. After clicking on the picture it brought her back to the same lexia as before, this was frustrating. This page was shorter than previous ones but had a long list so it caused her to just skip over most of it. Now there is no more links.
This became frustrating to figure out what to do. But she went back to the first page where she chose 1 and decided to choose 2, which led to a whole different story line. Within the second story one of the links took her back to the picture from the previous story which went to the first story. The links seemed to disappear after clicked, which got more frustrating. Within the second story, it is slowly starting to connect characters to the first story. She would go back to previous pages to see where each link went to, on which this page had 4 links. The girl who knew the boy who drowned seemed to come up in both stories. The mouse was rarely moved, besides to choose the link, though sometimes she would move it from paragraph to paragraph as she read. She would often click back to recall the new connections. There did not seem to be any satisfaction as she progressed.
The portion of the screen in which the writing is displayed keeps getting smaller as the picture on he left keeps multiplying. You can click on the picture but it leads you no where. Pointless? Probably. The more links there is the smaller the writing portion is which really got frustrating when it only showed one word on a line, which made the reading experience really jagged, and disrupted. Once she clicked on the link at the end of that page the portion where the words are disappeared completely.
The beginning of number 4 is the ending of number 2, but number 3 seemed to be something totally different so number 4 seemed like a logical choice, but it lead back to the picture which brought back to story 1. Number 4 only has 3 lexias.
Some links were not visible unless you clicked randomly because they were the same colour as the background until clicked. This caused more all over mouse movements in order to see if there was any hidden links. This drowning boy comes up in all, it seems, but through different perspectives.
She got pretty tired of the progression pretty quickly. This seemed to sometimes slow her reading, no matter the length. The confusion seemed to lessen any expectation she had for the links that were given. She had seemed more interested when first discovering a connection through the water picture and the drowning references, but when the plot did not lead anywhere particular the frustration came back even stronger. Eventually she almost gave up reading it all and just wanted to click on the given links to see where they would take her. It became really overwhelming. She did not even remember what she read in previous stories once she clicked onto the next number. Also if you click on the portion of the picture above each number it transports to you to the same link the number did. This made the picture above to seem totally pointless.
The whole experience was not satisfying at all, because nothing was consistent. There were a lot of distractions and disruptions that called for your attention away from the story lines.
3. David Fu observing Dan Johnson
Reading time
The reader required a significant time to complete even a relatively short paragraph due to the bizarre content. Continuity was a primary concern. Even reading one screen from beginning to end was equally as perplexing as randomly choosing links and reading the passages. The majority of the time was spent simply trying to understand the structural organization of the piece rather than reading the actual material the reader felt that he had to establish the mechanism of the piece first and then approach the content. Unlike reading a book, where interaction was conventional, the interface was too unfamiliar and made the content almost inaccessible.
Mouse Behaviour
The predominant observation was that there was a high occurrence of highlighting the text when reading it because of the blue text on blue background nature of the presentation. It became almost painful to read the text as it was, and the highlighting served as a remedy. There was also a significant amount of random mouse movements and hovering over potential links; it seemed that he was afraid that if he accidentally clicked on an invisible link, that he would lose his footing. The reader also experimented with the navigation bar by hovering over different areas to determine if the navigation bar had any structure. The reader seemed exceptionally confused when the string image navigation bar on the left frame changed.
Where the Links are
The location of links was fairly ambiguous, the confusing link system with the string graphic didn't give any indication as to what the structure of the text was. There was fairly little understanding as to how the string colors were associated with narrative structure. The reader ended up randomly selecting links that lead to random lexia. The content was so inaccessible that the reader basically gave up attempting to sort out any continuity with the piece.
Recursion
There wasn't a chance for recursion since there was such severe confusion that the reader lost orientation and sense of spatiality. Ultimately, even if there was recursion, the reader did not notice to a significant extent.
Link Expectations
First, the reader the was disappointed that the numbers on the first page (navigation bar on the left) did not lead to anything. The reader also had difficulty initiating the passage presentation, for he clicked on a peripheral link that lead to the Eastgate company homepage. Expectations could not be formed because there did not seem to be a logical connection between the lexia and the links embedded within them. The reader ended up giving up on the internal navigation of the hypertext and used internet explorer tools such as history and back/forward functions.
4. Albert Woo observing Rob Lesniak
Not sure where the actual beginning is. Unsure of what the colored lines are and what they signify. Too much writing per page to focus on. Lose interest because the first page has too much text; cannot ease into it. The blue text on blue screen makes it difficult to read. Already can tell that it will be unnecessarily challenging to read through the text and maintain attention. It so long and difficult to focus that user has to use the mouse pointer and high light to follow the text.
This reader does not like the fact that there is only one link choice per page. Once read, must go onto the next page according to the preset order. This makes the No link choices to exit long lexias. There is little connection between the subject of the link with the lexia that it brings the reader to.
Reader enjoys the interactive image bar on the left; an additional image is brought up with every link making the text narrower. Clicking on the images changes the line patterns, and this makes the reader want to progress through the hypertext to extend the image.
A few links in there is an image link with no text, and the reader is unsure of what the meaning or symbolism is. Perhaps it is an image of a reflection in water. The last lexia brings the reader back to the image, and clicking the image brings the reader back to the text of the last lexia. Each time this occurs, there is an additional image bar on the left making the text frame on the right narrower. The image page and the page with the final text cycles around until there is no more space; the whole window becomes filled with frames of the image. It seems that there is a limit to the number of links that you can click because of the fact that the text will narrow with each choice.
Eventually everyone of the 8 links from the index page leads the reader to the trapping text/image cycle forcing the reader to go back to the index and proceed to another number choice.
Lack of connectivity makes the reader attempt to piece the information together and formulate or find the author's intended meaning in the literary work.
If you had already been to a certain page, it can trap the viewer (momentarily) because the link will turn dark blue and the reader will not be able to see the link button.
It is helpful that there is an introduction stating the purpose of the passage and the
The hypertext shows potential for being an interesting and engaging text. The introduction could have been more thorough to inform the reader on what they will entail in the hypertext to allow the reader to be able to anticipate how the hypertext plot will flow.
There is no logical or predictable direction of where the links will lead the reader making the hypertext frustrating to read.
Waves of Girls, by Caitlin Fisher
1. Ravi Chahal observing Tim Warwick
Hyper fiction reader observation:
The cursor went to the graphic to see if it was a link.
When reading the text the cursor did not follow the text but rather stayed at the scroll bar
The first link that was clicked was near the top of the page.
When scrolling down the page use of the scroll wheel and the scroll bar
Unexpected and unwanted page used the left side links to navigate to another section (not concerning with "sexual" content).
The background and the text similar color made reading hard.
Rather than the using the in text links the navigation links at the bottom of each slide were being used more often about 6-7 pages into the hyper fiction.
The cursor was also not on the scroll bar when near the bottom.
When faced with a "bizarre" text, and used the side navigation to enter another section of the hyper text.
Every time when faced with an odd image the cursor went on the graphic to see if it could be manipulated.
Frustration over lack of continuity.
The text on the page was awkward, and lead to quick movement through the page.
When there were no navigation links at the bottom of the page, an in text link was chosen.
Most often when no navigation link available at the bottom, the in text link near the bottom but not the last link were chosen.
There were graphics on some slides that the user could manipulate but were placed intermittently, and used at different pages in different locations.
Near the end it seems as thought there is less reading and more skimming of the entire page then going back to see if anything grabs the user. Especially when faced with pages with a lot of text.
More time was spent on reading pages with lesser text then the pages with more text.
The cursor was often in the middle of the screen onto the text.
On pages with text the reader found interesting more time was spent reading and the in text link that was chosen was near the top of the page.
Afterthought:
Not a book that the reader would read "normally."
The page containing slurs was interesting, only the page with the slur
Many repetitious circles, which were hard to escape.
Rest were random, erotic, lesbian tales/ encounters not particularly interesting.
2. Anthony You observing Eric Cheng
Initial reaction to the site in class was that of sexual-typing from the name. Upon self-exploration in the lab, the title was guessed at being of personal accounts from female perspectives. First highlight was on "I want her" revealed sexually explicit material, that wasn't quite shocking, more so unexpected. This feeling went away as the site was explored further, as sexually explicit material was throughout. The characters seemed to change, from the perspectives of what seems to be the author is male, but later inferring that the narrator is a lesbian. The ambiguity of gender allows the reader to relate regardless of their own gender, or sexual orientation. Everything is written in first person, and the only information we have on the narrator is that they are 15 years of age.
Laughter arose during instances where the stories seemed absurd, or interactive images were appalling. For example, "school tales" revealed a story of a 6th grade slut Tammy from a 5th grade perspective, and how Ricky was no longer a virgin since she sat on his hand. This school theme recurs and we can go as far back as Kindergarten. An image of a woman's breast that can be manipulated via the mouse is also a source of initial laughter, and then confusion. The story can be said to be never-ending and requires the reader to click through links he/she finds interesting, usually because the reader has lost interest in the current page.
The links sometimes lack interesting details, but at other times, certain links stand out easily, such as "I undo his pants with my teeth...". When a scrolling marquee appeared, Eric was reading it out loud to himself as it scrolled by in order to remember what was on the screen, in somewhat of an involuntary fashion. Once or twice, dissatisfaction, discomfort, and disinterest caused an exit and return to the start menu, and a review of the menu options. The second time through, clicking "dare", there was much confusion and disorientation. And we quickly returned home.
Expectations on the site based on the title was that the site was not to contain as much sexually explicit material than it did. The links were not as coherent and cohesion of the site as a whole was less than expected. The task of trying to read everything on the site seemed an enormous and taxing task. It was easy to get lost in a story and there were too many links to be able to discover where they all went. Starting over from the beginning became common as their seemed to be an endless amount of choices, and this was consistently so. Reading time seemed never-ending, and abrupt stops resulted from reader interest levels. The stories almost never seemed finite, to the point where clicking on links stopped, and finishing a page of text to the end would result in a finite but unsatisfactory end. It was too hard to "get the full story". Mouse behaviour was interesting, for example the few pictures that could be manipulated, such as the aforementioned breast. Some of these devices distracted from the overall literature.
The links were too abundant, to the point where they became annoying. Recursion was rare, which created a very linear feeling to the story, however it was hard to backtrack and reflect once too many levels had been gone through. Although it helped with immersion into the text, reflection and epiphanies were hard to accomplish. When recursion does occur, it is very unexpected, further disorienting the reader.
Overall subjective satisfaction was that the piece was difficult to read, and general reader dissatisfaction. The images in the background seemed random and irrelevant, and it did not help that they were blurred and not well done, thus not even appealing to the eyes. "It is one thing to include interesting pictures, but this is distracting". Eric concludes that the site had too many misleading titles, that he felt the reading was difficult and disorienting. After a 5 minute break, he returned to the site and commented "this is the worst thing I've ever read."
3. Eric Wasylishen observing Alex Rossol
Alex chooses "I want her," which seemed to be the most exciting option on the front page, and then "Jennie," as learning about the character sounded more interesting than the other option. The page about Jennie was what he expected: more information about Jennie, quite a personal description of the narrator's experiences at summer camp with Jennie.
He chose "the s l o w movements of Jennie's fingers" next, and was surprised by the abrupt change. The format is different (larger text, only 4 lines and a large image of a girl's legs walking.) The tone seems to have changed from a fairly literal journal entry to a more metaphorical daydream. However, it seems like it could be the same narrator and the subject (feeling) is maintained.
Alex continues by choosing "A hand on my thigh that reminds me of all other hands." He remarked that there is little plot continuity between this page and the previous, but the subject matter is similar. This page also has a pair of arrow buttons at the bottom of the page, whose purpose was not clear to Alex. He tried them both to see if they functioned like the back and forward buttons in a web browser, and after finding that they didn't, decided to take the forward button.
On this new page, Alex noticed that the narrator is now 10 years old, while she was 7 on the last page, explaining the action of the button he chose. He wonders if the narrator is the same person as in the page he started at, going back several pages, and realizing with surprise that one image is interactive. He decides to return to the page about the narrator as a 10 year old, and clicks on the link "shake it and hear glass" as it was a somewhat disturbing image.
Next, the story changed to a new character and new format (an image is the most prominent element on the page, and there are no longer obvious hyperlinks.) The connection with the previous page is that it describes a character tripping and falling in to a glass door. The next few pages take Alex through the glass, and then to the children and a bus driver watching the accident occur. Again, there are no hyperlinks, other than a back and forward button and the central image which goes forward.
The next page seems to be the original girl, who is on the bus at the time this accident occurred. Alex was satisfied that the plot connected back to the original narrator, and ends his reading here.
Alex found the experience of reading These Waves of Girls very positive he was concerned that the story would be disjointed and incoherent, but it mainly followed one character. Hyperlinks led the story forward, the new pages were relevant to the previous, and at the same time the interactivity and multimedia features created an experience which took advantage of the hypertext medium.
4. Wendy McGrath observing Amber Medynski
Splash screen - feeling like she should click on "listen", but moved mouse around screen. Clicked on "listen" to bring down menu. There was no sound yet, went back to "listen", still no sound. Clicked "listen" again to bring down menu, still no sound, but scrolled through the list, went slowly down from top to bottom and clicked on "her collections" and opened a window "collections 2" to a screen titled "Imagine" and expanded the screen. Rolled mouse over essential central graphic, curious about what would happen. Visual responds (expanding and contracting) in reaction to the mouse movement. Losing interest in text. Eventually move on to scroll down to text. Pausing, hand off mouse, then back on. Adjusting volume. Reading text, pointing at text, momentarily pause on hyperlink, resist clicking because "want to see what happens". Distracted by everything going on around the text. Scrolling. Now finished that portion, clicked on "conjure" brought to a page where the image relates to previous link and the word "conjuring" is there. Relevant. "I don't like that I'm thrown into the middle of this...piece...lexia." "This reminds me of poetry. Font sizes are different...different colours." Scroll back to the top and begin to read top to bottom of this page. The text is well-written...I keep getting distracted...the border...the text is really well-written but I'm having trouble focusing." Clicked on "The girls from my camp are from the country".
Top of a lexia to another image, clicked on image, to another image of trees and light, shadows. Scrolled down and scrolled up. "I catch them in my bare hands and wait for my little fists to light up." Rolling over a square portion of the visual (/farm_fireflies2.html). Reader notices an option to go forward, at the bottom of image. Goes back to where she wanted to read. Mouses over grainy image over "fireflies" graphic, reads text. Reader wonders why there is no sound. Scrolling down, reader feeling like she has to start over again, got distracted, diverted. Reads text using arrow as guide. Yellow text and black background is displeasing to reader. Reader chooses another navigation bar on left choose crushes. Is startled by sound. "Creepy, giggly, laughing" scared her. Thought LH navigation would take her somewhere, but it has not done that. Reading text using arrow as guide, hand has left mouse, reading text. Hand back on mouse, clicked on a "play" button in text, and nothing happens. Then giggling begins. "It's good that you can stop it." (the giggling). Likes the screen, got more involved because text is on white background and started to ignore what was around the text. Reader sees that she wants to finish reading and then go back and pick a link. Clicked on bottom link of "they'd made a little girl like me stay up late at night" (/farmfireflies.html ) Took reader back to a first fireflies page. Clicked on arrow at bottom and returned to page visited before. Frustration with the navigation. Reader got away from this section and did not want to go back. Reader frustrated that she could not anticipate that. Page has two firefly links and visual, reading and some scrolling, then reader clicked on arrow which brought up text. Desire to go back to the main menu, but frustrated. Clicked on "navigate" and went back to home page. Discovered that could click back to previous screens using links at bottom of page, toggling between browser windows. Reader abandoned experience.
Then returned to "kissing girls" on the home page and clicked through two additional pages to a page that offered the reader the option to "listen" to the story. "Close your eyes to listen to the story." When all senses are stimulated at once, it is confusing. Perception is that the reader is not involving the whole body. "This is just sitting at a computer."
The reader's previous reading experience (spent about 30 minutes with text) did not include the "listening" option. Reader says she would have chosen to listen. The first reading of this hypertext by this reader was a different experience, because different portions of the text was chosen, and in this second reading, the graphics that were distracting.
Critique:
The reading experience was unsatisfactory: fragmented and unsettling. This was in part because of the dissonance between the text and visuals, as well as, at times, confusing navigation. The reader described the experience of reading this hypertext as "chaotic."
Part of the problem with this hypertext is that the home page design (formal with text-based navigation) is not consistent with the rest of the hypertext. Visuals and text often compete, confusing the reader in regards to the action which will propel them forward in the text, or back. Also problematic was that the visuals for the most part were static (i.e. did not respond to "mouse-over" or clicking into them.
5. Taonga Lupwayi observing Maciek Maryl
Original Menu stays open upon clicking a link
Tends to follow the story page by page at first, clicking only a few links, which led to pictures
Later begins to explore with the links, discovering sounds and graphics, not really reading the story, lots of distractions
Use of the navigation bar on the left is critical
Reading time is very short in a sense that he is just kind of grazing the surface and focusing on the different links as opposed to actually reading the story
Finding it hard to navigate back to a specific page
I wish I could write you a road trip, a big orange bus on a pilgrimage to Salt Lake City sitting cross-legged on top of the book of Mormon, wishing I could sing like that.
I'd write about how I don't understand my companion's preoccupation with authentic roadside diners. It's suspect in a banal way …what it would mean for us to find one, I'm not sure but it would be vaguely ugly, have something to do with stewed rhubarb, vanilla ice cream, speculations about our waitress Patty's dreams.
Later, cheeks flushed from our encounter with the 'real', the girl from Brigham Young would expect me to make love to her, her hand stroking my cheek the first of her fingers entering me but I'd only be thinking about Patty, that very gentle violence.
Example: waves/city2.htm (journey stories link) 5 options (4 links and a graphic)
The link 'Journal Stories' was not really what was expected upon clicking the link. As opposed to an actual journey story it gives you an impossibility of giving an account, so quite the opposite.
We found that the links more than anything are more to break down the story and allow the author to give her own impressions in a subjective account. The graphic becomes interactive when you scroll the mouse over (it becomes distorted and provides different aspects) The first link is associative in that it leads you to a similar event dealing with a school bus. The second link is more definitional in that it takes you to a page that elaborates on writing and the desire to write which she calls the desire to fool the reader. The third link is somewhat explanatory in that it takes you to another point in the story to elaborate on an idea and provide more information about the event referred to. The fourth link is somewhat explanatory but it works with the layout and the graphics to evoke a more intimate feeling. So we discovered three types of links. Associative, definitional, and explanatory. All of them work on the basis of the author's own subjective account of the story.
6. Kevin Owen observing Anthea Lam
Anthea tended to spend shorter amounts of time on pages which consisted primarily or entirely of pictures; she often expressed frustration when she could not immediately determine the relevance of the photo in relation to the text (if any was provided). This is natural, I think, due to the relationship our developed interpretive strategies have forged between image and text: take (for example) a press photograph - although the explanatory text is seemingly parasitically attached to the photo, the photo more or less becomes the text after reading it. Many of the images in These Waves of Girls frustrate this relationship, thus causing the reader to feel alienated or deterritorialized by the hypertext.
At one point, Anthea had three windows open at various places in the text. Is that cheating? She was very hesitant to click on a link in the middle of a section - I think she felt a bit overwhelmed by the extremely open structure, and thus began imposing her own order to feel more comfortable: rules such as "I must finish this section before moving on to a new page." She tended to navigate through the hypertexts utilizing the arrows at the end of sections or the list of "chapters" to the left of the text. Despite her self-imposed order, she still often said that she felt "lost," and it seemed to detract from her enjoyment of the text.
Eventually, perhaps because she discovered that there was really no order to be had in the text, she began selecting passages to read rather arbitrarily. That is to say, once she moved to a new page, she would use the scroll wheel to glance the whole page over without reading much of anything. If something caught her eye, she might pause to read or view the image, but she seemed equally inclined to just randomly click a link and see where it would take her.
There were times where Anthea expressed the desire to easily find a previous page - she would find a section or page which really seemed to speak to another which she had previously read, but with no easy way to return to that page or find it she couldn't easily compare the two.
I asked her if she could provide me with the general idea of what is going on in the story. She was very hesitant to do so, saying that she felt like she hadn't seen enough of the text to say anything with conviction. Typical narrative conventions like a linear, causal narrative are not present in hypertexts, so I could understand her anxiety about summing up what she read: where would she begin?
Because we do not have much experience reading hypertexts, I think it is only natural that we feel alienated and uncomfortable when we consider their open structure. Many of the reading conventions which we have been rigorously schooled in are not applicable here, and the disconnect is a violent one. It was an interesting read, to be sure, but it will always feel a bit gimmicky, I think, in the final analysis due to no fault of its own: the interpretive strategies associated with reading conventional literary texts are just far more prevalent in the average reader.
Summary of main comments
Twelve Blue Waves of Girls colourful sidebar: attracted to click on
distractions from story line
expectations not supported
hesitation over link choices
hidden links
image bar interesting
image without text, meaning unclear
infinite loops
lexias that appear to trap reader
mechanism unfamiliar
no contextual expectations
only one link to click
potentially engaging text
random clicking for links
recursion
recursion to graphic repeatedly
reduction of screen size, down to one/no word on screen
return to beginning
screen design blue on blue difficult to read
story fails to develop
treating it as a puzzle
unpredictable direction to link choicesalienation from hypertext
anticipation thwarted
arbitrary link choice
associative, definitional, and explanatory linking that works
cohesion of site lacking
continuity in sections, forward link only
dissonance of text and graphics
distracted by objects on screen
format shifts surprising
gender of author unclear at first
graphics that respond to mouse-over movement
images seemed random, irrelevant
inconsistent design
inconsistent occurrence of graphic-based links
inconsistent use of graphics for links
intermittent involvement in story
lack of continuity
listening provided as a more absorbing experience
loss of orientation towards link structures
manipulation of graphics by mouse
navigation sidebar unwanted
open-ended stories
plot discontinuity at times
reading conventions of narrative disrupted
reading time short, just browsing
reading times longer on shorter texts
recursion unexpected
return home to reorientate
satisfaction in following character
searching graphic for links
skimming later during reading
sound starts up, surprising
titles seemed misleading
unable to return to an interesting page
unable to summarize experience of story
unpleasant screen design
Document created November 21st 2007 / Revised November 27th 2007