The 33 rooms in Puppet Motel seek to tell Anderson's stories through a variety of interactive techniques. To describe the interaction in the rooms I use an object-oriented approach that identifies the interactive objects in the rooms, and the type of interaction that occurs with each object.

The area in the top-left of the screen is a half-size representation of the Puppet Motel screen. Interactive objects are red rectangles on the screen. Move the mouse on top of the red rectangles to highlight the properties and methods of that object. Click on a room in the list of rooms to change to another room. Click on a room state to change states. Not all rooms have more than one state.

To assist you in using the Rooms Interaction model, please view this video introduction.

Open Rooms Interaction model

If you are interested in seeing how the rooms interaction was created, you are welcome to download the Macromedia Director file. (In Netscape use Save this link as.... In Explorer use Download link to disk. Don't just click on it.) It requires at least version 8.5 of Macromedia Director. Macromedia does provide a trial version of its software if you would like to download it.

Interaction Term Glossary

• room state: Rooms in Puppet Motel can change in both appearance and functionality. For example in the music room, the cursor action click on one of the violins causes that violin to move in to the foreground. The violin can then be played using the mouse.
• interactive object: Any object in a room that responds to a cursor.
• cursor action: Actions performed on an interactive object. Includes the effect of the action. For example, in the waiting room, a click on the digital clock causes a room change to the room psychiatrist.
• move: While over an interactive object, move the mouse without clicking.
• click: While over an interactive object, click the mouse button.
• holdover: Move the mouse over an interactive object for a short period of time (2 to 3 seconds).
• cursor: The appearance of the mouse pointer on the screen.
• cursor explanation: Moving the mouse, while in the rooms of Puppet Motel, often causes the cursor on the screen to move in ways other than those typical in other applications. In an extreme example, moving the mouse left might cause the cursor to move right on the screen.
• normal: Mouse movements cause the cursor to move as it does in most applications.
• space effect: Usually in the vertical dimension. When the mouse is moved up, the cursor moves up on the screen and gets smaller. Similarly for motion down, the cursor gets larger.