HCIL-2010-31

Today’s mobile devices are natively equipped with multimedia means for families to capture and share their daily experiences. However, designing authoring tools that effectively integrate the discrete media-capture components of mobile devices to enable rich expression remains a challenge. This paper details the observed use of StoryKit, a mobile application that integrates multimodal media-capture tools to support the creation of multimedia stories on an iPhone/iPod Touch. The primary objectives of this study were to explore the ways in which applications like StoryKit enable families to create and share stories; and to investigate how the created stories themselves might inform the design of and learning potential for mobile storytelling applications. Its results suggest that StoryKit’s relatively simple but well-integrated interface enables the creation of vibrant, varied narratives. Further, its portability supported the complementary coconstruction and spontaneous, playful capture of stories by children and their trusted adults.