Towards narrative information systems

Abstract

Narrative interfaces promise to improve the user experience of interacting with information systems by adapting a powerful communication concept which comes natural in human interaction. In this paper, we outline how such a narrative information system which answers queries using elaborate stories can be realized. We show how to construct query-dependent plot graphs from unstructured data sources. Also, we conduct an extended user study on our prototype implementation in which users adapt and personalize the plots of query-dependent stories. These studies provide further insights into which parts of a story are relevant and can be used as a starting point for either personalizing stories or for crafting better user-independent stories in later works.