help un/wanted

Intention

My aim with this project was to create a speculative future in which technology is used to help students get support when they may not seek it themselves. I am torn about how such tools and systems should function as they are on one hand potentially life-saving while on the other hand potentially invasive. I intended to use the power of storytelling to place my audience in this future state, allowing them to sort through the tension between these tradeoffs. This piece relates to memory in that the way an individual's memory of their own wellbeing relates to a system's quantified memory of an individual's wellbeing. I am curious in the contrasting slippages and blindspots inherent in both representations of self.

Prototype

I created a piece of interactive fiction to speculate on the influence of a future system that monitors students' mental health and general wellbeing. The non-linear story borrows structural ideas from what Chris Bateman refers to as narratives that are "parallel path" or "threaded".

Parallel Path

Threaded

I used the tool Twine 2 to create a website that presents this interactive fiction. I chose the story format SugarCube 2, which influences how the experience is styled.

Here's an overview of an intermediate version of the fiction:

Twine allows you to link passages to others by using links. A link can set the values of a variable to allow for dynamic text in later passages that is based on the selections the interactor makes.

The final prototype is hosted at the following link: help un/wanted

Precedents

A number of researchers have explored different ways to determine mental state and behavior change using technology. This work includes interpreting data from smartphones (Doryab, Min, Wiese, Zimmerman, & Hong, 2014), keystrokes & mouse movements (Kołakowska 2013), and social networks (Choudhury, Gamon, Counts, & Horovitz, 2013).

When thinking about such systems as imposed by an institution, I considered Foucault's concept of the panopticon. I specifically thought about how the potential of always being watched influences behavior.

I was influenced by the styles of writing in two texts. The first is Agony by Steven Zultanski, in which the author, "uses semi-rigorous mathematical and logical constraints to view the author's life and body, telescopically, as little bits of time and space." The second is Christopher Alexander's "A City is Not a Tree", particularly a passage in which he describes the interactions formed between otherwise separate elements in the environment.

The work "Prosthetic Manifesto" by Darrius Fletcher influenced my consideration of a tool that fills in deficiencies or blind spots in one's self-perception or self-regulation.

Process

I originally was planning to explore a solution that allows you to capture portraits of your wellbeing periodically so you can see how you've changed over time. This could also allow you to identify people, habits, or situations that impact your wellbeing. Finding "Prosthetic Manifesto" led me to consider how a system could make up for the blindspots in an individual's wellness. At this point, I decided to pivot towards a speculative project around the use of sensing and data by community administrators to intervene when members display signs of distress or deviant behavior. I started this phase by creating a set of questions (included in the next section). Then I thought through multiple scenarios in which surveillance and intervention could be successful and unsuccessful, appropriate and invasive. Around this same time, I also familiarized myself with Twine and its features. Much of the work came about as I built different trails of the story, learning about where the narratives should go as I created branches. I included the idea of switching identities to allow the reader to function as multiple characters in a future iteration. Each persona would experience a different set of scenarios within the world.

Open Questions and Challenges

Core questions

Surveillance

Intervening

• How does a concern about an individual's well-being escalate? When do you become a “risk”? What happens then?
  
• When does it alert someone in your social circle/family? someone outside of your circle who knows you?
• How are the tool’s concerns shared with the owner, others, authorities?
• How should sensitive or emotional information be shared in a way that protects the viewer?
  
• How might surveillance, therapy, and other health resources work at the level of effect rather than the level of causation?

Defining Mental Health

• Who is to say what behavior is unhealthy? What value systems are inherently prioritized by defining what behavior is unhealthy or indicates poor mental health?
• How does the medical model vs. social model of disability apply to the treatment and surveillance of mental health?
  

Meta questions

• How can one create a design future in which utopian and dystopian elements emerge for different people?
  
• How can a speculative design future function as a tool for discussing and exploring the ethics of the vision’s choices and reach?
  
• How might a non-linear narrative provide a useful way to explore multiple scenarios and their outcomes?
  

Reflection

This was my first time making an interactive fiction and it proved harder than I expected. If I did this again, I would make more use of planning aids to map out the story and weave the pieces together into a more cohesive story. However, I did find the end product successful in terms of giving the interactor choices which subsequently influence their environment.

Attribution and References

Documentation Resources

Game Design Concepts: Nonlinear Storytelling

Darrius Fletcher's "Prosthetic Manifesto" was included in the exhibition "Power & the Soul" at CMU's FRAME gallery.

The image of a panopticon was found here.