Narrating by Doing: A Bridging Concept for Understanding and Informing the Design of Tangible Interfaces for Storytelling

We present and discuss the concept ‘narrating by doing’ as the process of creating narratives by performing different embodied actions with tangible interfaces for storytelling. We characterize it as a ‘bridging concept’ that can facilitate exchange between theory and design, informing research and design of TUIs for storytelling targeting young children. The concept builds on theories of cognition, learning and narration, specifically drawing upon the following perspectives: Constructionism, Socio-Constructivism, Embodied Cognition, Narratology and The Narrative Practice Hypothesis. Building upon these theoretical foundations, we identify and discuss four ‘design articulations’ (i.e. important parameters that express the qualities of the concept), namely communicative situation, narrative function of the tangible objects, collaborative and embodied actions and the narrator’s position. Finally, we add evidence to the concept and discuss its productiveness by presenting a set of considerations to inform the design of tangible interfaces for storytelling.