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Storytelling on mobile devices for cultural heritage
This paper illustrates a storytelling-based application for an anthropomorphic guide to a historical site, presented through a mobile device. We discuss the requirements posed by the communication context and the idea of approaching the problem through storytelling. Then we describe the application that merges the basic structure of storytelling with the requirements coming from the communication of the specific knowledge about the historical site, the user interaction issues concerning the target audience and the technological issues posed by the mobile device. Finally, we address the evaluation issues and we discuss the results with respect to storytelling.
| Download Paper | |
| Full Title | Storytelling on mobile devices for cultural heritage |
| Year | 2012 |
| Language | English |
| Journal |
New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
2012, number 1, volume 18 |
| DOI Code | 10.1080/13614568.2012.617846 |
| Keywords | Storytelling, Mobile device, Virtual character, Cultural heritage, Anthropomorphic guide, Virtual guide |
| Synonym | Intelligent User Interface |
| This article features a storytelling application for mobile devices that uses an anthropomorphic guide, Carletto. Carletto is a fictional Italian anthropomorphic spider, acting as a virtual guide to a historical site. He represents the interface of the application using storytelling techniques presented on mobile devices to guide visitors touring an old Italian palace. Carletto acts a narrator, a single-character performing dramatically on mobile devices of visitors on the tour, communicating factual and fictional information about places and objects within the site. Carletto as the interface of this practical storytelling application is the virtual representative for a specific location and mobility setting. The authors discuss the design, implementation and evaluation of their mobile based virtual guide. They express its significance against the background of a movement towards making visits to historical locations more interactive and participatory, a trend which has also influenced computing in the areas of augmented realities and virtual environments. They suggest that storytelling today has emerged as a ‘major paradigm for building cultural heritage applications’ (p.12). They also review the various paradigms for developing cultural heritage applications including the pervasive games approach, whereby personal digital assistants and smart phones are employed to manage large-scale role playing while providing recreational and engaging interactions with cultural heritage sites. They also review other systems using the cultural heritage storytelling paradigm. In Lombardo and Damiano’s own prototype, Cartello’s fictional world is superimposed on to the real world, which the authors also describe as ‘mimetic’ storytelling. The spider follows the visitor by a webcam, by which the spider can give contextually relevant information to the current room in which the visitor occupies. A user’s presence in a room is input to Cartello as a signal to provide information on the location. Not all information is provided at once, but some information is retained, in case the user later returns to the room. To break the storytelling information into chunks the developers of the application had to use what they called an ontological approach that fragmented the communicative knowledge into units from the most general to specific. Carletto thereby reacts to users’ mobile behavior through annotated scripts designed by the authors of the application. In fact, Carletto produces mobile dramatic performance on the handheld devices of users, alternating between information provision of facts and anecdotes that actually occurred in the space with fictional experiences. Hence Cartello professionally guides the visitor by discussing and formally describing rooms, their functions, historic events and the artistic features and objects in the room. Hence the template or script-base storytelling approach responds to users or visitors movement. The authors discuss the challenges in designing the application, noting that the interactive storytelling for such an application has to be generated with weak authorial control, being broken into small basic units that can respond to the input of users. The authors also discuss that in interactive digital storytelling, artificial characters serve the functions of being the medium through which a story is conveyed to the audience as well as the interface between the system and audience. The authors conclude from the feedback collected, that the storytelling approach was well received by visitors, some of who wanted more interactivity from the agent with the possibility of asking and getting responses to questions. Children visitors believed that the spider actually existed and scanned the ceiling to discover him. The authors note one drawback as being that the mobile phone tended to isolate the user from a group experience. This they argue is an important limitation for those visitors that attend cultural heritage tours as part of a group, as the device limits their ability to interact with the group and exchange information and comments about the presentation during the tour. The authors conclude that their article illustrates a successful storytelling–based application with an anthropomorphic spider character that role plays a guide to a historical site. The prototype stages dramatic performances on the screen of a mobile device, validating the usefulness of a storytelling paradigm on the digital mobile device, as being emotionally engaging to audience while simultaneously conveying important information. The authors also conclude with the view that the application can improve communication strategy of cultural heritage sites by conveying information to visitors in an emotionally engaging way that will leave them with a persistent memory of the site through the character’s personality and representation of the site’s identity. |
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