The Challenge

Compelling television narratives are becoming increasingly complex. Shows like HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” can have up to 40 interrelated characters appear in a single episode all across a massive fantasy world. This places a huge cognitive burden on the viewer which can make a show confusing and frustrating to watch.

 

Role

  • Prototyper

  • UX Designer

  • Project Manager

 

Value Created

  1. Helped users orient themselves in complex worlds

  2. Assisted in understanding of the narrative with minimal effort allowing for improved engagement

 

The Solution

To reduce the cognitive load for the viewer we created a companion application that allows the user to fill in their knowledge gaps at a glance. This application is broken into two parts: A world map and character map. The world map shows where main characters are located in relation to each other. The character map shows the viewer at a glance what characters are in a scene and allows them to dive deeper into their relationships with each other. This app shifts some of the cognitive load away from the viewer allowing them to watch with greater enjoyment and engagement .

 
 

Afterwords

After we completed the prototype we proceeded to validate our solution with user research. We presented our findings at TVX ‘15 in a paper titled: A Game of Thrones Companion: Orienting Viewers to Complex Storyworlds via Synchronized Visualizations 

 

Low Fidelity Mockups

 

Medium Fidelity Mockups

 

High Fidelity Mockups