With the spread of eReaders and tablets, as well as a burgeoning interest in interactive storytelling, new storytelling services and mixed reality experiences have been developed, however few of these new services have found widespread adoption. The mainstream reading experience has remained largely passive with only the platform changing from physical to digital. Meanwhile, writing has taken many new digital forms in recent years from blogs to cellphone stories, but for most amateur writers, the motivation to write is often difficult to maintain. Feedback for writers, like the reading experience, has become more digital, but the process has mainly stayed the same. This research was aimed at evaluating the current shortcomings in the reading and writing experience to design a new platform that would not provide both readers and writers sustainable motivation to create a more active and engaging storytelling experience.
In this paper, we present DreamWhale, a mobile storytelling platform that allows any writer to write stories and then create a location-based mixed reality interaction between readers and story characters. Based on a month-long user test, we discuss the effectiveness of the platform as an indirect feedback system for writers and as an mixed reality narrative platform for engaging readers. We evaluate the types of storytelling the platform produced, shortcomings in the current system, and its potential as an experimental writing platform.

修士学位論文. 2011年度メディアデザイン学 第139号