Years of working in the education sector with adults has illustrated to me that passive learning or simply observing information has little impact on the learner in terms of creating a connection with the content. So much of learning is about fostering a sense of connection between the learner and the people and/or the content they are engaging with. How can we expect them to do this if they are simply reading words off a page or benign feed information by an expert. When learners are able to apply the information they are receiving in an interactive applied manner the content stays with them longer and they will feel more connected to the experiences of people with whom they have little else in common with on a day-to-day basis. More and more educators are acknowledging the powerful nature of experiential learning and are engaging their learners in real-world experiences through field trips to museums, galleries and other forms of exhibition space. Indeed, these spaces cater to a broader public beyond institutions of learning, and have also been thinking through more interactive forms of displaying their resources for the users of the space. Learners and users of spaces such as museums and galleries get ‘lost in the crowd’ as they move through 2D spaces passively observing artifacts fixed in time and space, or listening to scripted overview of the spaces they are in. With so much knowledge available at the click of a button it is key that we think about how to engage users so that this knowledge is relatable to them rather than simply abstract. 

Storytelling describes the social and cultural activity of sharing stories. Every culture has its own stories. Contemporary storytelling is also widely used to address educational objectives. New forms of media are creating new ways for people to record, express and consume stories. Storytelling is the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful. Storytelling has transformative possibilities which are mediated in place. Although the concept of storytelling and preserving lived memories is becoming more central in civic education as well as within institutional education, it is still viewed in a ‘traditional’ form of simply recording a record of the stories. The stories of residential school survivors, the stories of refugees fleeing their homes, the stories of people who have lived through traumatic personal events and used this experience for good, the stories of climate activists - to name but a few - are sometimes offered as guest lectures or recorded in audio form to be preserved and stored. This does not make them much more accessible to learners as the content still remains abstract and removed. It certainly does not make them interactive or engaging. Interactive storytelling is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. Technology has certainly offered solutions to how to enable authors to create an interactive digital story, but there is still a disconnect particularly in spaces of learning! Whether it be within the spaces of a university or the walls of a museum, the ‘tools’ are too often an add-on with the occasional special event or exhibit - impactful but short-lived. So how can we foster the powerful nature of storytelling with the robust and growing field of interactive technologies?

StoryMemory as a solution
combining the best of AR and AI

While still in its infancy, we at StoryMemory believe that AR will eventually become bigger than VR. This is because of the potential AR, combined with AI, has to blend stories into the real world. Although the VR market currently has a larger base size, AR is set to outpace VR’s growth within the next few years. 

Interactive AR-storytelling re-invigorates people’s relationships with place, bringing people together in shared experiences, making the invisible visible and bringing narrative experiences to new environments. Augmented Reality is a storytelling tool. It allows people to visualise and understand places. 

Augmented and Virtual Reality are often compared against each other. It’s often seen as a need to pick a side’. My experience in the educational field with adult learners has taught me that this approach is wrong. Both AR and VR belong alongside each other as technical solutions where it is the objective and the context which should determine the choice of technology. Why is AR the right technology for StoryMemory:

• AR allows for real-world integration which is key to place-based storytelling and lived memory. 

• Many users find VR headsets overwhelming, whereas the use of AR through a users’ cell phone provides a less invasive experience using a technology tool already available to them

• The growth and improvement of AI technology plays a huge supportive role in AR experiences allowing for more versatility and interactive experiences for the user 

What does StoryMemory offer?

A platform which enables the creator/author to upload a recorded story and then have the ability to design and manipulate the content of the story to create an interactive experience for the user. The content is manipulated through the use of an AI story flow canvas. The story flow canvas enables the creator/author to design branches or different scenarios where the end user can ask questions or make selections that take the story in a certain direction. The platform integrates conversational AI enabling interactions for the user depending on the selections they make. The creator/author builds out the story through a series of branches. The other component of the StoryMemory platform allows the creator/author to create an avatar which will represent the storyteller and will enable the user/learner to interact with the story. The content is then published to the StoryMemory App where the storyflow is combined with the avatar enabling the user/learner to hear and interact with the storyteller on their smartphones or tablets. The experiences are launched through a QR code in the location relevant to the story - ensuring that the story comes to life in the place where it matters. 

The market and StoryMemory's role 

Currently the use of AR technology is very much focused on the ‘gimmicky’ but the growth that is proposed to come in the next 3-4 years is huge. StoryMemory offers an early entry into this exciting market where AR is boosted by the integration of AI. Users of technology want to be able to really engage rather than be passive observers. StoryMemory is aimed at museums, archives and galleries used by the general public as well as educational institutions, specifically tertiary and adult education. There is currently no other platform on the market to compete with StoryMemory although there are other companies that are working in the area of VR training for soft skills, such as Tailspin and VirtualSpeech. Both of these companies illustrate how powerful AI integration is for training. Tailspin does include the use of avatars in their platform, but again their tool is a pre-packaged soft-skills training program for companies and organisations. Voiceflow is another platform which has developed a platform to allow a creator/author to develop voice command interactions specifically for upload to Alexa or Google assistants. StoryMemory was inspired by the AR/AI project called New Dimensions in Testimony designed and developed through a collaboration between the USC Shoah Foundation and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, in partnership with Conscience Display. The New Dimensions was an incredible powerful project enabling the story of one of the last survivors of the Holocaust to live on and to present a very real experience for learners and users. It is costly to create such a project for every story which needs to be told and so StoryMemory was born. StoryMemory fosters the immersive character of AR making it the perfect vehicle to tell your story in 3D and preserve the richness of our lived stories grounded in the place where they were told, for generations to come.