Ivy4Evr

I read and took part in Channel 4's story-by-SMS Ivy4Evr the week before last, and had some really nice moments with it.

It was the story of a week in the life of a teenage girl (about 16 and a half I'd guess) told to you by her sending you texts, and asking you to reply to questions both about yourself and to help her out.

I thought the tone of voice for a teenager was spot on and very authentic feeling, the events of the story were very well suited to being told in such an intimate space (though I don't think all stories for a mobile small screen need to be so TV small screen), and the writer(s?) did well at getting across enough information to keep the story moving without breaking the conversational to-and-fro feel of texts.

The first nice moment I had was when Ivy asked me a question to help her out, which was how could she get advice about being pregnant without anyone finding out.

This caught me at a good time, because the dialogue between me and her happened in the evening when it wasn't distracting me from anything else more pressing. And the question is so perfectly in tune with the kind of conversation that would actually happen in the intimate space of texts that it was very easy to accept the suspension of disbelief and start feeling like you are worried about the poor girl at the other end. That was added to for me because I wasn't completely sure I was giving the right advice - there used to be Family Planning Clinics (I think they were called), but do they still exist? And if I suggested her GP, am I sure that GPs don't have a duty to tell the parents of girls under 16?

That sense that I was being asked for advice from someone who needed it, but I might not be giving good advice, really increased the engagement for me - the story was happening inside my head (which is where the real mixed reality is). I also thought it was a fantastic learning device - I was very strongly aware of what I did and didn't know, because someone else was depending on me.

The second telling moment was when the spell broke.

Ivy asked me whether my parents were together and I said no because my dad was dead. I was in a bit of a rush so I said it in so many words.

Ivy's response was "Hi, Mines been divorced for ages. Can I tell you something."

From a storytelling point of view, that response didn't work. I didn't mention my dad to get sympathy, just as a matter of fact, but that reply didn't quite sound like even a 16 year old would respond to that information. If nothing else, why say "Hi", we'd been talking to each other for 3 days. "Oh. sorry." or "Oh :-(" would have been much better.

Up till that point I'd thought that Ivy was probably being orchestrated by humans, maybe through some sort of menu of customisable standard replies at each stage, but then i wondered if she was a chat bot and the writers/programmers just hadn't anticipated my answer.

One or two things I picked up on twitter though suggested that Ivy wasn't a bot, so then I wondered if the orchestration was being done by work experience people, straight out of art or media school, and they hadn't had the artistic maturity to script anything better on the fly. That's not meant as a criticism, I'm not sure I would have done at 22.

Both of those two reasons are just formal or technical questions which didn't bother me, but something else came to mind later which is a bit trickier. I wondered if the AI or the orchestrators had been told to change the subject straight away if any of the readers started to try and talk about their own problems.

I can see why that would be the policy, because there would be a danger of getting into long conversations that the AI or the work experience people just weren't qualified to deal with and couldn't really help with. But it does feel like a different kind of expectation has been raised than a TV programme about an issue with a helpline number at the end. If you are going to use the intimacy of a channel of conversation like SMS, and kid on to perhaps vulnerable teenagers that they are talking to a real person who asks them to help solve her problems, what is the right thing to do if those perhaps vulnerable teenagers then ask that real person to listen to their problems in return?

This is particularly true of Ivy4Evr because Ivy was NEET (Not in Education, Emplyment or Training). I wondered if Ivy4Evr had been designed specifically to try and to reach NEET teenagers through the only two-way media channel they would have consistent access to, their mobile phone. I thought that was admirable (at least for The Broadcast Media) and inventive, but it would mean the readership would be more likely than the usual to be going through a tough time, and I think there would be some responsibility to put a mechanism in place for engaging with them genuinely if they wanted to.

The last nice moment was the very final message.

Ivy had been hiding from a "squaddie type" who was trying to find her (my advice had been to lie on the floor until he stopped knocking on the door, which may not have been the most grown up) and then the messages stopped for the day.

The next message was from a friend she'd mentioned a lot, a lad called Adz, saying that he didn't know where she was. The change of voice was very immediate and effective in a text, and I interpreted it as him texting her friends from her phone.

We all feel in our bones that not-got-their-mobile can't be a good thing, so it made a great cliffhanger.

I wouldn't want to be too gushing about Ivy4Evr, because we did a story told by a character sending you texts, and asking you to reply to questions both about yourself and to help them out, in Huddersfield two years ago, and I don't think that was the first either.

But I did think Ivy4Evr was expertly handled and had some things to learn from.

My only other word of caution would be that I had a real interest in staying engaged and I just wouldn't know how much it worked for someone starting with no more, or less, commitment than they would bring to any other channel for storytelling.

Comments

[Matt Adams]

Thanks for your post. In fact, the system is automated with a system of flagging messages to human operators if particular keywords arise. Unfortunately you were one of three people who found a the bug relating to having a dead parent. We had anticipated this and scripted for it, but the parser didn't work.

The project is not aimed at NEETs but is intended to go to places that online cannot reach. We want to allow people to discuss personal questions around sex and drugs in an intimate setting but there are, of course, considerable limits to this approach. We're still learning how much intimacy to invite before it becomes unsustainable/unethical. Our experience from this most recent trial is that there are some fantastically moving exchanges between participants and Ivy.

As to antecedents, Ivy4Evr draws heavily on our previous project Day Of The Figurines:
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_day_of_figurines.html