Interactive Story

ARIS Game: Getting a Job at Nikki’s Place

Nikki’s Place suffered fire damage in March 2015, and is having trouble getting timely payment from their insurance company to complete repairs. If you’d like to help them re-open, please contribute to their GoFundMe: Nikki’s Place Restoration.

Getting a Job at Nikki’s Place is an interactive story developed as part of a digital media course at the University of Central Florida using ARIS, an open-source augmented reality platform for constructing mobile locative narratives that can be played on a device running iOS.

The purpose of the story is to teach the player the history of the Parramore neighborhood, a historic area in downtown Orlando, through the eyes of Nick Aiken, the owner of a popular neighborhood restaurant, Nikki’s Place. The game takes the player into the past, showing them the businesses that were in the once-thriving area. For an explanation of gameplay, please watch the video below.

Digital Story: Who is Mr. Nick Aiken?

Nick Aiken’s digital story was also created by Amanda Hill as part of the project.

User Testing and the Mobile Story Guidebook

In April 2015, the project team tested the story with ten 4th and 5th graders from Nap Ford Community School. The resulting insights were compiled into a guidebook intended to teach instructors how to develop interactive stories in the classroom.

The guidebook outlines the various stages of the production process, giving teachers recommended classroom activities for starting and ending at any phase. It also compiles and reviews technological tools for story development, most of which are free or inexpensive and can be used with varying levels of technological expertise.

Credits

  • Faculty Advisor: Dr. Natalie Underberg-Goode
  • Project Team – Initial Design:
    Bartley Argo
    Nicholas DeArmas
    Marsela Dervishi
    AJ French
    Amanda Hill
    Sara Raffel
  • Project Team – Testing and Development:
    Michael Eakins
    Amanda Hill
    Daniel McSwain
    Sara Raffel
    Rashaad Rosalle
    Shelly Welch

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