Interactive Storytelling in the Context of Large Public Spaces

Abstract

Storytelling is a universal method to present information, which has been widely used throughout human history. It has been evolving into different forms, adapting to rapidly changing people’s needs and emerging visual representation possibilities. The latest trend of digitalization brought the use of computer- and multimedia-assisted tools for telling stories, defined as digital storytelling. It has shown its potential and became a trendy topic in marketing and tourism industries. In addition, storytelling can be further advanced to adapt to the user personality and the context of use, e.g., become interactive. However, the concept of interactive storytelling is still unexplored in the field of Human-Technology Interaction, and there is no clear understanding of interactive storytelling benefits and in what forms it can be applied in a context of large public spaces. This work demonstrates an example of applying the concept of interactive storytelling in the context of a small-scale airport to facilitate entertaining time-spending by enabling cultural learning adventure and enhanced shopping experience. The scope of this thesis includes the design, development, and evaluation of a gamified storytelling application following the re-search through the design approach. The final application, The Finnish You, generates a personalised story of an imaginative person, a Finnish version of the user, and guides users through shops at the airport while presenting culture-related information. The application was developed iteratively within the research group and tested in two steps. First, the study in a controlled environment, simulating airport terminal area, was conducted with a focus on storytelling content and user experience. Nine student-participants used the application and provided feedback via interview and questionnaire. Next, a field study at the Helsinki airport terminal area was conducted with actual travellers. Three researchers managed to recruit 15 participants of different nationalities and collected their opinions with interviews, questionnaire and observation forms. The results demonstrated the potential of applying interactive storytelling to enable entertaining time-spending in the context of the large public spaces. A personalised interactive storyline was found to be an appealing way to present culture related information and promote local products. Via gamification elements and the effect of narration transportation it triggers curiosity and persuades to explore local brands while learning new facts about the culture of the destination. In a current iteration, The Finnish You application cater to a narrow group of users, who are looking for time-killing activities at the airport and may be engaged with a reading process. To make the application appealing for a wider public, a storytelling content should be modified and enhanced to be more visually pleasing for the users. Additionally, it should address other users’ needs, for instance, efficient shopping. The main contribution of this study lies in the set of design implications for an interactive storytelling application, which were developed based on the insight from both studies. These implications outline the ways to increase the quality of the application from the content point of view and from context-related factors. By formulating these guidelines, this thesis intends to promote the research on the concept of interactive storytelling in the context of large public spaces.