I've been thinking at cognition, cognitive models, etc. I haven't formally studied these in-depth, but my bookshelves are lined with Chomsky's syntax to Csikszenthmihalyi's Flow, over to Jakob Nielsen's work on Web Usability, specifically.

The point is that I've been thinking about "Design as Narrative".

Flow: User flow, Workflow, and psychological "Flow" Cognitive Models User Options (ability to impact the system) Progression of User Experience (across Personas) - from Beginner to Expert Self-Evident Design - Intuitive At each point in an experience, ask: What am I here to do?

Videos in usabilty studies can show where people experience confusion in an experience.

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On a different note, programming is also narrative in a way. More clearly, it is editing. Commit by commit. We are editors of this codebase.