Page 227 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

210 Socially Intelligent Agents

Figure 25.2. Children, with stars on their bellies, experience the Sneetches StoryRoom. The
cardboard box on the left is the Star-Off machine. The box in the middle, The Toy, has a light
effector attached to it.

Furthermore, stories were more interesting because emotions were more than
words on a page, they were also acted out. Indeed, these observations suggest
that, at least for our child researchers, perception is sufficient for conveying
feelings in stories.
At the end of our summer 1999 design team workshop (an intense 2 week
long, 8-hour day experience), we held an open house and invited guests and
families to experience our Sneetches StoryRoom. We arranged the visitors
into pairs of adult and child designers. They entered the room three pairs at a
time. While all the children appeared to enjoy exploring the room and making
things happen, their parents did not always understand what was happening.
Furthermore, when they activated many things at once, the room became a
cacophony, and the story became difficult to follow. We were also pleasantly
surprised by their high level of enthusiasm in guiding their guests through the
StoryRoom. Not only did these children wanted to build the story, they wanted
to share it with others.
Based on observations from our intergenerational collaboration, we created
the following guidelines for designing attractive and entertaining storytelling
environments for children:
1 Give children the tools to create.

2 Let children feel that they can affect and control the story.
3 Keep interactions simple.

4 Offer ways to help children begin stories.
5 Include hints to help children understand the story.

6 Make the technology physically attractive to children.
Our work continues today on StoryRooms. We are currently developing a
StoryKit that enables young children to physically program, or author, their