Interactive storytelling: interacting with people, environment, and technology

Stories are an important part of children’s social and cognitive development and are an integral part of their lives. In this paper, we share a short synopsis of Mobile Stories, one of the narrative systems we have developed with and for children. We also share lessons we have learned while designing, developing, and evaluating Mobile Stories. In designing and developing narrative systems for children, we advocate iterative co-design (specifically Cooperative Inquiry). It is also important to encourage and enable creativity, interactivity with the environment via movement and mobility, and interactivity between users. When evaluating interactive storytelling systems one should consider the different story tasks of reading, creating, and sharing.