Augmenting the City with Fiction: Fictional Requirements for Mobile Guides

In this position paper, we discuss the user experience of a new genre of mobile guide services, which augments the users’ physical surroundings with fiction rather than with facts. First, we outline sources of inspiration from fiction, storytelling in place and on the move, and related research within the area of interactive narratives and location-based games. We then present and discuss five overall types of fictional mobile guides embodied by the metaphors of 1) treasure hunts, 2) jig-saw puzzles, 3) playing dominos, 4) playing scrabble, and 5) collecting butterflies. Finally, we describe a preliminary design idea for a prototype system intended to explore the design, implementation, and user experience of fictional mobile guides.