Inspiring Stories through Content

Caitlin Kelleher

Abstract

Through user testing of Storytelling Alice, we found that users' ability to find and develop story ideas was important in maintaining their engagement with programming in the system. In this paper, we describe the design process behind creating a gallery of characters and scenery that helps Storytelling Alice users to find and develop story ideas as well as lessons learned about successful and unsuccessful strategies for scaffolding the process of finding story ideas through content. We analyze thirty-six stories created with Storytelling Alice and examine the relationship between story complexity, users' attitudes towards Storytelling Alice, and their programming behavior.