1st International Workshop on Interactive Storytelling for Children

Workshop on Interactive Storytelling for Children,
to be held within the 9th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design for Children.


The goal of this full-day workshop is to bring together researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines who share a common interest in understanding the challenges of interactive storytelling for children. Storytelling, meant as the process of creating narrative structures or of engaging with them, is pervasive in many aspects of children’s life. This topic has received increasing interest by the Human Computer Interaction and Interaction Design and Children communities DC fields, where a variety of technologies and design approaches have been explored to foster new forms of children’s creativity and to increase, through interactivity, engagement, enjoyment, fun, as well as the achievement of educational, cognitive, or interpersonal benefits.

This workshop will explore the design, development, and evaluation of interactive storytelling for this target group from different perspectives: i) the different technologies and interaction paradigms; ii) the different profile of children (e.g., age, needs) and the different contexts of use (e.g., school, home, museums, therapeutic settings; iii) the different roles of children in relationships to interactive stories (authors, consumers, or technology designers).

We aim at bringing together researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines - technologists, empirical researchers, HCI designers, educators, pedagogy specialists, psychologists, artists - who work in interactive storytelling for children or are interested in exploring the challenges of this domain. Our purpose is to collect participation that integrates different views and ideas, findings and experiences, and to promote an interdisciplinary exchange.

A selection of the best position papers will appear in the conference proceedings and in the ACM Digital Library, and will be considered for participating in a Journal Special Issue on Interactive Storytelling for Children.

For a detailed description of the workshop scope and goals:
http://hoc.elet.polimi.it/idc/2010/assets/doc/STORYTELLING_Extended_Abstract.pdf

Storytelling design for Mechatronic at TEC-Lab

My colleagues at the TEC-lab at the University of Lugano
have just designed a storytelling web application
for an industrial customer: Mechatronic.

You can access the website at:
http://www.mechatronic.unisi.ch/

The application development exploits an effective and usable storytelling design pattern and content management system developed at University of Lugano and Politecnico di Milano.

Herman Hesse Storytelling Series - by TEC-Lab, University of Lugano and Politecnico di Milano

>>>> Storytelling about Herman Hesse - just publihsed (in italian): Alla Ricerca della Verità

La serie editoriale Hermann Hesse è sviluppata in collaborazione tra l’Università della Svizzera italiana (TEC-Lab), il Politecnico di Milano (HOC-Lab) e la Fondazione Hermann Hesse Montagnola. L’obiettivo principale di queste narrazioni è di diffondere la cultura del Museo Hermann Hesse, in un modo sia informativo che di intrattenimento.

La serie comprende delle narrazioni su temi generali legati alla vita di Hesse e alla sua opera creativa, in connessione alle mostre che verranno organizzate presso il Museo Hermann Hesse a Montagnola (Collina d’Oro). Il formato narrativo consiste in una serie di “storie” che presentano i vari temi dell’argomento prescelto. In ogni storia, una narrazione audio è accompagnata da immagini evocative. Questo formato consente di conoscere l’argomento prescelto in un modo rilassato, grazie all’ascolto della narrazione audio e al susseguirsi delle immagini.
Per chi volesse saperne di più, è possibile accedere a un livello più approfondito di informazioni.

Grazie alla tecnologia resa disponibile al TEC-Lab dal Politecnico di Milano, ogni titolo sarà fruibile come sito web, un numero di files iPod e un CD-ROM. Questo formato è già stato implementato con successo in varie altre applicazioni prodotte dal TEC-Lab e dal Laboratorio HOC (alcuni esempi sono disponibili in rete sul sito www.policultura.it/beniculturali.htm).

>>>> Storytelling about Herman Hesse - just publihsed (in italian): Alla Ricerca della Verità

New article published:"Simple, Fast, Cheap: Success Factors for Interactive Multimedia Tools"

I just got one paper published on PsyhNology Journal, on low-cost multimedia development: Read the paper >>>>

Abstract:
This paper discusses key factors contributing to the “success” of interactive multimedia development tools in non ICT professional contexts.
We define “success” in terms of acceptability and large scale usage by entities and institutions who may need to build interactive multimedia artifacts but do not have technical competences “in-house” and must cope with very limited financial resources.
Schools or museums, for example, may want to exploit interactive multimedia for communication or educational purposes, but are bound to many resource-related constraints. In this perspective, we argue that simplicity, low-cost,
and ultra short “time-to-market” are key requirements for interactive multimedia development tools to be accepted and widely adopted by non ICT professionals.
To support his claim, we illustrate an exemplary tool that meets these requirements and was developed at our lab within the Policultura Project.
The tool was successfully used by cultural heritage experts in Italian small museums and by over 1300 students of 55 schools in Italy, and brought important educational and social benefits to all stakeholders involved.