Interactive Storytelling and Mobile Augmented Reality applications for Learning and Entertainment — A rapid prototyping perspective

Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) Technology in combination with Interactive Storytelling (IS) enables the design of new kinds of technology enhanced learning and entertainment applications. The existing pedagogical research as well as the available Interactive Storytelling MAR (ISMAR) Serious Games are rather limited. This is mainly because of the difficulties of MAR applications development and the complexity of IS authoring. The paper works on the direction to improve this situation exploring the combination of a) rapid prototype development methodology based on MAR authoring tools and b) the definition of IS genres which could serve as templates and guide the ISMAR design. In the paper, key concepts are presented, existing successful examples of MAR Serious Games are analyzed in order to extract their narration genre features, available tools for MAR rapid authoring are introduced, and afterwards the design and development of a prototype ISMAR Serious Game is presented. The paper contributes to the bridging of learning design, IS, and AR technology research communities and facilitates feature interdisciplinary research.