Design implications for believable & engaging scenarios

The recent researches in the realm of virtual learning environments have revealed how children can positively contribute in the design process. Comicboarding is a participatory designed method that involves the use of comic books and drawings to produce believable and engaging scenarios with children. Researchers can elicit ideas from children by leveraging known plot formats, interaction styles and characters in comics. The paper describes collaboration with children that enabled researchers to capture the stories and experiences children tell about persistently proliferating violent behaviour in the Japanese schools namely Ijime. This collaboration resulted in the design implications that helped in generating and appraising scenarios for a virtual edutainment environment populated by intelligent virtual agents for exploring the problem of Ijime. The objective was to generate comic-type summaries of these narratives for user-centered design that vocalizes children´s voice in the technology process. The technique helped the investigators in examining story logs; gathering information related to personality and emotional characteristics of the characters; understanding their actions and importance in the narrative and selecting the key fabula for interactive narrative environment.