The expert advice emphasised the pivotal role of emotions and player self-expression in crafting interactive narrative, along with the importance of designing believable characters and meaningful choices. A comprehensive heuristics framework to craft ISL was developed based on the insights from this phase. Through iterative prototyping and reflection, the heuristics framework was evaluated and refined, and subsequently applied to the recrafting of a virtual patient for compassion training

While no statistically significant differences for narrative transportation were found, the results from the playthrough data and open-ended questions demonstrated that incorporating emotional depth into virtual patient design significantly impacted learner engagement and empathy. Participants exhibited more compassionate care when interacting with the recrafted virtual patient, showing highly improved decision-making to promote patient outcomes.

This study turns for guidance to the expertise of narrative designers for games, where storytelling for interactive narrative has a long history of testing, iterating and perfecting. A collection of proven techniques described by game narrative practitioners will inform creative writing efforts to craft prototypes to test the transferability of those techniques to interactive narratives in a healthcare education context.