Guidelines to design digital graphic novels portraying emotional social phenomena using critical systems heuristics and HCI principles

Abstract

The goal of the Mandela27 project is to promote intercultural dialogue between South Africa and the European Union regarding historic cultural events that took place during the Apartheid era in South Africa. One facet of the Mandela27 project is the development of a digital graphic novel that should inform young adults about the emotional social phenomenon of conditions of prison life during the time of Nelson Mandela’s incarceration in a medium that they find engaging and entertaining. A review of literature revealed that there are currently no guidelines for creating digital graphic novels portraying emotional social phenomena. This study aims to develop guidelines for the design of digital graphic novels portraying emotional social phenomena using critical systems heuristics and human-computer interaction principles. This is achieved through a review of literature pertaining to digital graphic novels, humancomputer interaction and emotion. Applicable guidelines from each of the aforementioned literature reviews are combined into a set of proposed guidelines which are incorporated into the design and development of the Mandela27 digital graphic novel. The design and development of the Mandela27 digital graphic novel will occur according to the five phases of action research. These phases of action research will be guided by critical systems heuristics in order to ensure that the needs of both those involved (expolitical prisoners) and affected (target audience) are met. Ex-political prisoners are asked to relay their stories of incarceration in Robben Island Prison. Themes are created from the aforementioned stories and are incorporated into the narrative of the Mandela27 digital graphic novel. The developed digital graphic novel is evaluated by members of the target audience in order to evaluate its aesthetic appeal. Recommendations from the evaluation are incorporated into the design of the final version of the digital graphic novel. The final conclusions of the study are drawn by providing a list of proposed guidelines for the design of digital graphic novels portraying emotional social phenomena using critical systems heuristics and human-computer interaction principles. A digital graphic novel is created based on the principles of critical systems heuristics.