The Big Bang Stigma
Read case studyTranslating research on illness stigma into an interactive journey through identity, recruitment, and livestream performance.
Interactive narrative / 3D environments / 2024
Blind Dating Market Festival
Turning the rules of a dating market into an explorable narrative
OVERVIEW
Overview
Originally titled “Blind Dating Market Festival”, the project draws on dating corners, dating apps, and matchmaking contexts. It explores how complex individuals are reduced to comparable attributes, using a carnival to make familiar but overlooked rules explorable.
- My contribution
- Interactive narrative, environment, and visual design
- Project stage
- Concept design, environment visualisation, and concept film
- Deliverables
- Research synthesis, six scenes, choice and feedback mechanisms, and concept visuals
01 Question & intent
In matchmaking, information is displayed, filtered, packaged, and judged. Appearance, occupation, financial circumstances, and family expectations affect choices, while trust remains difficult to read from a label.
The project uses participatory narrative to reveal these mechanisms, letting choices and feedback show how the rules affect relationships.
02 Research & translation
Compressed information
Attribute displays in dating corners and interfaces inform the question of comparison through labels.
Packaged identity
Truth, omission, and amplified strengths become different strategies for self-presentation.
Evaluated relationships
Family and social expectations enter the experience as external rules that alter paths and outcomes.
03 Decisions & experience journey
Six connected scenes include an invitation hall, love factory, emotional roulette, matching hub, social evaluation area, and dating paradise. Each carries a rule, with choices and consequences connecting the journey.
Identity before matching
Participants first choose how to present themselves, giving later matching decisions traceable inputs.
Judgement as feedback
Installations, rules, and changing routes make abstract comparisons visible.
Consequences through a continuous narrative
Connect information choices, trust, and external pressure so that scenes carry narrative consequences.
04 Spaces & environments
05 Outcomes & next evaluation
The outcomes include a narrative concept, environment visuals, and interaction rules. They document a path from social observation to experience design; the project has not been released as a complete game.
The next step is a short playable route that tests whether participants understand how their choices affect outcomes, before adding further scenes and branches.
