Purpose

Some virtual, immersive stories are filled with documents that users must locate and interact with to experience a narrative. Exploring a new area of inquiry in the information science field, this study focuses on individuals' experiences with documents in a particular 3D storytelling world.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a qualitative approach, this study examined user interactions with virtual documents to better understand the relationship between information behavior and narrative spaces. This study employed observations of users in a story-rich world, followed by semistructured interviews using virtual artifacts and stimulated recall.

Findings

Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study found that (1) environmental and personal influences, (2) the search and the narrative experience and (3) expectation and confirmation events surround a user's experiences with documents in storytelling worlds. These influences and experiences determine the user's relationship with these documents, which may be considered narrative ephemera – objects that a user accumulates to create and structure a story. This model of narrative ephemera depicts the user's search for narrative cadence, fulfillment of competence needs and visions of story events or the user's own lived experiences. Individuals may experience these phenomena from a single document, shifting back and forth between the designers' intentions and the users' own realities.

Originality/value

This study represents a first attempt to investigate information behavior in a distributed narrative space: a virtual world filled with documents. This study reveals that commonly employed information behavior theories, as well as literary and motivation theories, may be well suited for investigating story worlds. Continued research in this area of inquiry may benefit educators as well as designers of digital stories.

中文翻译：

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叙事短篇小说：故事世界中的文件

目的

一些虚拟的，身临其境的故事充满了用户必须找到并与之互动以体验叙述的文档。这项研究探索了信息科学领域的一个新的研究领域，着重于个人在特定3D故事讲述世界中使用文档的经验。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用定性方法研究了用户与虚拟文档的交互，以更好地了解信息行为与叙事空间之间的关系。这项研究采用了在一个故事丰富的世界中对用户的观察，然后是使用虚拟工件进行半结构化访谈并激发了回忆。

发现

使用解释性现象学分析，该研究发现（1）环境和个人影响，（2）搜索和叙述经历，以及（3）期望和确认事件围绕用户在故事世界中的文档体验。这些影响和经验决定了用户与这些文档的关系，这些文档可能被视为叙述性的短篇小说-用户积累来创建和构造故事的对象。这种叙事性短暂表情模型描述了用户对叙事节奏，对能力需求的满足以及对故事事件或用户自己的生活经历的看法的搜索。个人可能会在一个文档中经历这些现象，在设计者的意图和用户自己的现实之间来回切换。

创意/价值

这项研究代表了调查分布式叙事空间中信息行为的首次尝试：一个充满文档的虚拟世界。这项研究表明，常用的信息行为理论以及文学和动机理论可能非常适合研究故事世界。在这一研究领域的持续研究可能会使教育工作者以及数字故事的设计者受益。