Trees of Tales: Designing Playful Interactions to Enhance Reading Experiences (Fatma Al Aamri, Stefan Greuter and Steffen P. Walz) Interactive Technologies and Games (ITAG) Conference 2015 Health, Disability and EducationDates: Thursday 22 October 2015 - Friday 23 October 2015 Location: The Council House, NG1 2DT

1. Trees of Tales: Designing Playful
Interactions to Enhance Reading
Experiences
Fatma Al Aamri, Stefan Greuter, Steffen P Walz
RMIT University, Australia

2. • Reading is IMPORTANT
• Low reading rates among Arabs especially
children
2
Reading for Pleasure

3. • Potential reasons:
– Access
– Economy
– Family
– Oral Culture
3
Low Reading Rates

4. Designing an interactive reading experience
using technology to involve children and their
families in a fun reading activity.
4
Proposed Solution

5. • Mobile technologies designed for children can
change the way children learn (Druin, 2009)
• Designing for children should consider
children’s (Hourcade, 2008):
– Abilities
– Interests
– Developmental needs
5
Designing Interactivity
for Children

6. • Place the educational content at the core of
the game
• Provide feedback and hints to scaffold
interactions that create stimulating content
for a child (Fisch, 2005)
6
Designing Educational
Games

7. • E-books, which integrated corresponding
interactivity into the content of the story were
found to elevate the comprehension of the text.
• Features such as narration, sound effects and
animation, which support the text, help to
remove the effort from decoding individual
words, and allow children to focus on the
meaning.
7
Meaningful Interactivity

8. ‘PLACE ON STAGE’
The design and composition of all visual
elements on a theatre stage, which provides the
visual theme for a narrative (Bordwell & Thompson, 2012)
8
MISE EN SCÈNE

9. • Toontastic by Launchpad Toys
• The Book Creator by Red Jumper Studio
9
MISE EN SCÈNE
Examples

10. Interactive reading
application that was
carefully designed to
be playful, meaningful
and enjoyable
10
TREES OF TALES

11. 11
TREES OF TALES

12. 12
Mise en scène in Trees
of Tales

13. 13
Evaluation
Parents’ surveys
Experience surveys
Fun toolkit
Printed storybooks
Arabic Stories
E-book
Trees of Tales

14. 14
Children’s Opinions
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Most Fun Ease of use Best
Content
Preference
Trees of Tales
Arabic Stories e-book
Printed books

15. 15
Parents’ Opinions
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Most Fun Most Suitable
Trees of Tales
Arabic Stories e-book
Printed Books

16. Children found Trees of Tales the most
enjoyable reading experience of the three
interventions tested.
The majority of children did not find Trees of
Tales as easy to use as the other interventions.
16
Findings

17. More than 50% of the children instead picked
the basic e-book application as the easiest to
use.
The stories in Trees of Tales are more interesting
than the stories in the other two interventions.
17
More Findings

18. • To improve the interest of children in reading:
1. Provide school children with a variety of reading
material.
2. Use cultural related material to encourage the
involvement of parents.
3. Implement playful and meaningful interactivity.
4. balance the challenge with the abilities of the reader
if they want to create an optimal experience.
18
Recommendations

19. More information about the difficulties the
children encountered while using Trees of Tales
would be beneficial to inform future
development of such applications.
19
Future Research

20. Thank you
Any questions?