CONVERSATION TREES - FLOWCHARTS & TIMELINES:

This is a very specialised area of interactive script development. Some filmmakers use timelines in the scriptwriting process, and producers and editors still use flowcharts in post-production. In multimedia development, flowcharts graphically represent the decision-making process that results when the user makes choices within the application. They can be seen as stepping-stones across the information space.

Multimedia is primarily a visual medium, and it’s important for the writer to be working with the assets in visual terms as early as possible, to better understand the substance of the information and how the parts work best as a whole. Well-planned flowcharts are a very important aid when designing behavior patterns for the user to experience. Simple timelines can become an important part of larger, more detailed flowcharts, overview diagrams and navigation metaphors.

Flowcharts and timelines are chronological diagrams, primarily used to illustrate specific events, plot movements and interactive details, sometimes including character notes and dialogue. They consist of EVENTS, PATHS and INTERSECTIONS. Whether it’s an encyclopedia, a recipe book, a mystery maze or a first-person shooter, the flowcharts are the blueprints of the interface, and should illustrate all of the available interactive steps in a clearly understood, logical order.

Flowcharts are the first way for the development team to actually 'see' the application in development. They can be useful when deciding on appropriate animations and video shoots in advance of production. Certain commercial jobs demand dry, clinical flowcharts, others Monopoly-like games for boardroom presentations. Some childhood learning applications utilize three dimensional 'Pop-Up!' examples. Detailed flowcharts are at the core of interactivity, and they can be as amusing and creative or as dry and clinical as any other area of development.

Like all the other scripts, the writing should be simple, direct and in the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE tense. You can describe the functional processes of the application in graphic terms. This can be done with pen and paper, or with software designed for making flowcharts. The disciplined writer can quite easily construct a complete, three dimensional 'schemata' of the proposed application, on paper or onscreen, using these means.

The final flowchart should illustrate ALL the available interactive steps in a clearly understood, logical order. Because of this, flowcharts can become extremely complicated. Great fun and games, but also another way for the creative and adaptable writer, artist or designer to kick-start ideas about the user’s instinctive choices and responses. It’s a fact that the more detail supplied to the multimedia programmers, the easier the writer’s job is while the programmers are authoring code, and complex flowcharts are the ideal means for recording all this information.

If you need more on this subject, source a text on User-Based Industrial Design Processes and read it.

FLOWCHARTS usually evolve into STYLE GUIDES & STORYBOARDS.