Cast: A Context-Aware Collaborative Storytelling Platform

The process of creating stories with others is fun and engaging for participants, but often labor-intensive. This is especially true for the central organizer, who is usually needed to provide scaffolds that guide participant contributions and enforce a cohesive story structure. To make this task easier for the organizer and participants, we propose the use of context-awareness to scaffold participant contributions in a collaborative storytelling experience. We present Cast, a platform that allows an organizer to concisely define a story script that is opportunistically deployed to users through a context-aware mobile app. Leveraging user contexts to define their roles within a story provides users with scaffolds that promote cohesive narrative development, and automating this process prevents burdening the organizer. Results from a pilot study show that creating stories with Cast is engaging yet low-effort for participants, showcasing the potential for context-awareness to make collaborative storytelling easier without sacrificing enjoyability.