A talk given to Volda VGS Media students at their annual MK Talks

1. Future of
Storytelling & AX
MKTalks - Jon Harman
Medieproduksjon, Høgskulen i Volda
23 November 2018

2. Self-reinforcing myths have served to
unite human collectives throughout
evolution
Unique human ability to create and
spread fictions

3. We co-operate with strangers because of our
ability to tell stories and get others to believe
them
When we believe the same fictions, we obey the
same laws, and can thereby cooperate
effectively
(Harari, 2018)

4. Campfire & The Universe
Something to bring us together and
something bigger than ourselves

5. Always been one to many medium
Now many to many

6. Traditional Media
Audience
Source: ssb.no
Newspaper
Television

7. New Media
Audience
Source: ssb.no
Games
Internet
Video Media

8. –Tim Freeman
“The world that didn’t offer people
an ever increasing variety of on-
demand content and services is a
history lesson in the millennial
mind .”

9. Stories as Format
(Peters, 2018)

10. Instagram Stories
Disengagement
(Peters, 2018)

11. Storytelling Grammar Changes
(MIPCOM, 2017)

12. (Richter, 2018)

13. New Campfires All The Time

14. Algorithms Curate Our Stories
(Constine, 2016)

15. Algorithms Curate The Stories Of
Us
(Starr, 2017) (Mason, 2011)

16. Algorithms Can Write The Stories
(Moses, 2017)
(Underwood, 2018)
(Goode, 2018)

17. AI Bots Helping Conversation and
Discoverability

18. –Tim Freeman, Founder Hark TV
“The future of advertising, and all
media, is conversational. Millennials
and future generations will not only
desire to have a voice, they will
demand it.”

19. BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME
UX EXPERIENCE TELLS US THAT IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE

20. Basics of Short Form
Storytelling
Needs to Attract Attention
Evoke an Emotional Response in Audience
Shape Perception and Motivate Action
Driven Less By Linear Progression, but
connected emotionally and conceptually
(Cook, 2016)

23. (Eng, 2018)

25. Gaming the Audience
and Algorithms
Jamie Oliver Banana

26. AX PROTOTYPING
• Test 1: How does the audience perceive their role and agency within the
story environment?
• Test 2: How does position, interaction and engagement impact story
interpretation?
• Test 3: What impact do visual and device constraints have on story
experience?
(Buchenau & Suri, 2000)

27. VR, AR & MR

28. Hyper Real Stories
(Matsuda, 2016)

29. Who Are The Experts?

30. Digital First Agencies & Production
Houses Are Recruiting Graduates At
Growing Pace
They are vertically focussed businesses
and agile

31. Traditional Media Companies Hunting
Digital First Upstarts
These strategic bets will be driven by the realisation that new DNA is
needed to play in a transformed mobile-first, social and millennial
driven media environment - TechCrunch

33. How we sit around our campfires and the
universe we create are down to us.
We are the storytellers of the future

34. –William Gibson
“The Future is Already Here, It’s Just
Not Evenly Distributed”