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.