Iyagi: An Immersive Storytelling Tool for Healthy Bedtime Routine

This paper documents an attempt to support parents and children in co-creating dynamic, fun and consistent bedtime routines through immersive and interactive storytelling. The proposed system, Iyagi, would be designed to ease the friction experienced by parents and children as they transition from evening activities into the bedtime routine as well as move between different stages and spaces within the bedtime routine. The key features of Iyagi would include: (1) Unfolding of a story across multiple rooms in which key bedtime activities take place; (2) Incorporating the physical space, projection of stories, objects, and the parent and child into the story; (3) Unique interactions with tangible objects, tied to the immersive story; (4) Natural interactions through voice, motion and tangible interactions; (5) Progressively calming activities and environments to ease children to sleep. The work presented follows a non-linear process that moved back and forth between user-centered research, idea generation, prototyping and evaluation. Outlined in this paper are learnings and insights from research that evolved into a proof-of-concept prototype. We've also included preliminary thoughts on opportunities for future development of the concept.