Designing Stories to Inspire Preschoolers' Creative, Collaborative Roleplay

Abstract

Young children's interactions with media influence their social play, which impacts their development. Seven years ago, at the start of a project developing a system to support preschool children's creative, collaborative roleplay, we identified a need for children's media specifically intended to set up play. In this paper, we present best practices (e.g., designing a balanced cast of characters with complementary skills) and lessons learned (e.g., to proactively counter themes that may encourage stereotypical play) over the course of this project. We also describe our ongoing and planned future work which aims to provide additional scaffolding for children who need extra support to engage with their peers and to create abstractions based on what we have found works well so others can leverage that knowledge as they create their own content.