Mirrors
A design solution for Interactive Narrative on UGC Video Platform
Role: Experience Designer & Concept Developer
Tools: User Research · UX Strategy · Narrative Design · UI Collaboration
Year: 2024
Overview
How might we bring meaningful, interactive storytelling to User-Generated Content (UGC) platforms, where creators often lack professional tools or narrative experience?
Mirrors is an experimental interactive documentary that repesents a dashboard for content generators to produce interactive narratives. It introduces a modular, non-linear storytelling format that allows users to explore multiple perspectives of real-life stories without requiring technical expertise from creators. Rather than presenting a single, linear storyline, it invites users to actively choose which character’s point of view to follow and how long to remain immersed in that lens.
“Mirrors” — a haunting glimpse into hidden reflections, teaser by Ali Tajik.
Design Process
1. Discover; Understanding the Landscape
- UGC and VOD platforms strive for deeper engagement and viewer retention.
- Video platforms offer rich, interactive storytelling tools.
- UGC creators lack technical ability, time, or training to create structured, branching narratives.
- Most UGC content is informal, episodic, or improvisational that makes it difficult to apply traditional storytelling methods.
- Key Insight:
Interaction in UGC must be intuitive, lightweight, and not dependent on tightly scripted narratives.
2. Define; Framing the Challenge
Design Question:
How might we enable a non-linear, interactive narrative format for real-life themes—accessible to everyday content creators?
3. Develop; Exploring Solutions
We explored interactions that required no storyboarding, scripting, or professional editing skills. Core design criteria included:
- Supporting non-fictional, everyday content
- Enabling viewer choice across a shared narrative theme
- Delivering a visually intuitive experience for both creators and audiences
- Maintaining flexibility for various storytelling approaches
4. Deliver; The Final Solution
We designed a feature that enables producing an interactive, multi-perspective documentary.
As a sample, the desiged system has been used to present a production following the lives of four teenagers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The story revolves around a general subject, “immigration”.
- Non-linear interaction: Viewers switch between characters at key life moments
- Flexible narrative paths: Personalized, self-directed viewing experience
- Dashboard prototype: A no-code tool for creators to assemble modular stories
- Thematic cohesion: Despite free exploration, all stories remain connected by shared social realities
Creator Dashboard – UI for Interactive Story Assembly
As a team we designed a simple and intuitive dashboard UI for content producers to build their own interactive stories. I was responsible for UX strategy and interaction design. The designed tool is tailored for creators with minimal technical background, enabling them to upload, tag, and connect video clips into modular narrative flows, without writing code or building complex timelines.
The dashboard allows creators to:
- Add new scenes and assign them to different narrative threads
- Tag key moments for viewer interaction (e.g., switch point, pause, transition)
- Preview how viewers will experience the story across multiple paths
This interface is a central part of the project’s mission: to democratize interactive storytelling on UGC platforms.
Key Features
Four content streams under a unified theme: the relation of youth across social classes to a general subject; immigration.
- Interactive dashboard for creators to upload, tag, and connect scenes
- Branching interface for personalized storytelling journeys
- Scalable structure for adaptation across genres (e.g., travel, food, lifestyle)
Artistic Approach & User Experience
Mirrors is a study in perception and narrative immersion, through an interactive narrative. The user is not simply consuming content, but actively participating in meaning-making by choosing a viewpoint to enter the story. This deliberate agency allows deciding which perspective to adopt and how long to stay within it. It places the user in a dynamic relationship with the narrative. Through this, they do not just follow a plot; they navigate a field of emotions, perspectives, and subtle shifts in understanding.
This structure creates a fluid narrative experience. The transitions between viewpoints are smooth and intentional, offering a meditative rhythm rather than abrupt changes. These flowing shifts allow users to construct a broader, layered understanding of the central subject. Each perspective adds a partial truth, and their accumulation forms a contemplative overview, which makes the experiecne is more like assembling a mosaic than following a linear thread.
From a user experience design perspective, this results in an uncommon kind of engagement: immersive, reflective, and self-paced. Instead of being guided through a fixed path, users are invited to dwell, explore, and make interpretive choices. The experience prioritizes emotional depth and personal resonance over speed or completion. It encourages users to stay with the material, to linger in ambiguity, and to construct their own meaning over time.
Artistically, Mirrors is a response to the fragmentation of contemporary narratives. It treats empathy as an evolving, spatial process rather than a static emotional response. It asks the user to look again, from elsewhere to recognize that what we see depends on where we stand and how long we’re willing to stay there. In doing so, it turns interaction into a poetic act of reflection.