Quick thoughts from my MA discussions re. the loss (adjustment?) of narrative when using small chunks of content.
Designing with objects in mind will create a certain constraint on content. An analogy with books comes to mind – yes, they’re all based on chapters, paragraphs and sentences, yet they need to be in a certain flow or the magic is lost, not to mention the narrative! If we think about great media (documentaries, film, books, theatre etc.) they all have structured non-audience defined narrative.
Interestingly, Eastgate’s Storypace is tool designed to build hypertext stories. Been around for ages and there’s a big community on hypertext based novels. Now these by definition feature user controlled narrative structure – interesting model/lessons. There’s a huge richness to this format and ‘chunks’ of content should allow varied audience needs.