Designing Picturebook Apps: Valuing Culture & Community

This article examines picturebook apps as sites of value negotiation and design in support of community and culture, illustrated through the ongoing design and development of an O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree community-centred picturebook app, Pīsim Finds Her Miskanow (Pīsim Miskam Omiskanow). We introduce the C&T; community to early research on electronic picturebooks, and illustrate how picturebook theory is expanded with the remediation of print texts into multimodal narrative experiences. We turn to the case of Pīsim to further enrich and diversify these conceptions, weaving elements of culture into earlier models of picturebook apps. We draw on design theory, specifically the concept of values as hypotheses, to offer storied insights on how the design process of the Pīsim picture book app is enriched through its commitment to the originating community. We conclude with implications for the community-grounded design of interactive cultural belongings, not limited to picturebooks, including museum exhibits, educational installations, and digitized cultural heritage pieces.