Understanding children’s use of a mobile digital storytelling app

ABSTRACT

Storytelling plays an important role in early childhood education. Advances in digital technology have allowed storytelling to expand into shared and collaborative experiences. While mobile apps have enabled children to engage in creating digital stories, there has been relatively limited research on how children create and engage in digital storytelling experiences in ‘in the wild’ mobile environments. In this study, we developed Animation Kit, a digital storytelling application that enables children to create and share short and simple animated stories. We conducted a thematic analysis on a random sample of 200 animations submitted to the app's gallery and conducted semi-structured interviews with three heavy users to gain insights into their creative appropriation, sharing, and collaboration behaviours. Our analysis revealed several interesting forms of appropriation of sharing and collaboration and strong demand for communication. Based on the insights gained through data analysis, we propose design implications for digital storytelling platforms, such as a nonlinear storytelling approach contests and an asset-sharing system that empowers users to share their creations with others and one that can maintain a history of user edits.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital storytelling
• computers and children
• creativity support tools
• online creative collaboration
• animation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Young Sang Cho

Young Sang Cho is a PhD candidate in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, specializing in child-computer interaction. He also holds a position as an adjunct professor in the Department of Film, TV, and Multimedia at Sungkyunkwan University, where he teaches interactive design and creative coding. Additionally, he founded Norilab Inc., where he leads the design and development of creative software for children.

Jiwoo Hong

Jiwoo Hong is a former research assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST and is currently working as a senior user experience designer at Samsung Electronics. With an interdisciplinary background across engineering and design, his research interests include designing new technologies for enjoyable and sustainable experiences in everyday life.

Woohun Lee

Woohun Lee is a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, where he has led the Wonder Lab since 2002. His lab strives to humanize technology and create delightful user experiences through experimental methods which blur traditional boundaries between design, art, and engineering. He has presented his work at CHI, DIS, and SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies and was also awarded the Grand Prix du Jury at Laval Virtual 2012.