KidStory is constructing tools to support collaborative storytelling activities. Our design model is to invite children to be our design partners in an iterative design process that occurs within the school context. Research that informed the creation of the project demonstrated that children in groups tend to be collaborative even when ample equipment is available. However current consumer style (PC) platforms do not readily support this. The KidStory response is to augment the current hardware model with multiple input devices while at the same time, moving away from interaction in the desktop "fishbowl." The project acknowledges that spatial navigation (e.g. in virtual worlds), is problematic and instead offers solutions away from traditional interaction paradigms and toward real world interfaces, e.g. tangible artefacts. These are solutions that employ real-world interaction devices (plush toys) and real world display (reactive spaces, augmented environments) as an answer to spatial navigation and interaction problems.

The narrative focus in KidStory is to go beyond the scripted interactive book-style narrative and allow children to create shared stories and storytelling experiences together. We have at different stages used and extended two storytelling platforms with a strategy that the two approaches compliment one another, both in their approach to narrative and in their mode of human computer interaction. The first, KidPad, is a zoomable desktop drawing program with a tools-based interaction metaphor and a 'scene-based' narrative presentation. The second, DIVE, used for some early experiments, is a 3D shared virtual environment which is based on gesture and mode interaction and is inspired by more improvisational forms of storytelling.

These platforms have been extended to support collaborative functionalities, both on a software level and in that they support different types of tangible input devices, such as touch surfaces, rfid tags, video tracking, digitizers, image scanners, barcode scanners, etc.

DIVE
KidPad