Simplicity, slowness and good old stories as strategies and perspectives of design in hypermedia and media

How can we catch the attention of the user? How can we decelerate the dynamic of the user attitudes? How can we simplify the complexity of the information? To rise to these challenges we need strategies that can best be described with the words 'deceleration', 'simplicity' and 'narration'. Dramaturgy in a film is the correct application of pacing, of rapid pulse beats and then to pause for a moment. Applied to the design of hypermedia applications this means to weave "moments of contemplation" into the narrative flow in order to create a polyperspectival dramaturgy. To transfer the strategy of storytelling of a film into the "liquid architecture" of hypermedia means to understand the principle of simultaneity in asynchronicity and how the principle of "Festina Lente" (Hurry slowly) will influence the design of hypermedia applications. On the following pages the author will explain by analyzing several CD ROM masterpieces how the symbiosis of content, navigation and design can create a "cognitive design" and how voyeurism, ludic contents, artefacts or interactive narrators help to capture the visitor's "feeling of solidarity" by empathy - visualized in a sensitive and inspiring dramaturgy.