SeaStory: An interactive narrative using collaborative features Ana Andrade 2048716@student.uma.pt University of Madeira Funchal, Portugal Mara Dionisio University of Madeira Funchal, Portugal ITI/LARSyS, University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal Valentina Nisi ITI/LARSyS, University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal Figure 1: Seastory Mobile Application and Screenshots from the visual novel. ABSTRACT Anthropogenic activities damage nature in several ways. In the con- text of Madeira archipelago, we want to raise teenagers’ awareness about the impact that anthropogenic activities have caused on the species Monachus Monachus (Mediterranean Monk Seal). To raise awareness of the Monk Seal ecosystem among the teenage popu- lation this work proposes the design of a Visual Novel enriched with collaborative and gamification elements, called SeaStory. The main goal is to provide educational content in a more attractive and engaging format. Through the realization of a functional prototype, for the android operating system, we want to study how the use of collaborative features in interactive narratives influences the user experience and the delivery of educational content. This work presents a novel approach by adding collaborative elements in a Visual Novel providing in this way a contribution in the design of interactive media with the goal of providing awareness about endangered species and ecosystems among a teenage audience. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Interactive learning environments; • Human-centered computing → Interactive systems and tools. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. IDC ’22, June 27–30, 2022, Braga, Portugal © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9197-9/22/06. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3535276 KEYWORDS Visual Novel, Interactive Storytelling, Collaboration, Mediterranean monk seal, Teenagers,Augmented Reality, Edutainment ACM Reference Format: Ana Andrade, Mara Dionisio, and Valentina Nisi. 2022. SeaStory: An in- teractive narrative using collaborative features. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’22), June 27–30, 2022, Braga, Portugal. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3535276 1 INTRODUCTION Anthropogenic activities such as the production of food for human consumption, overfishing, chemical pollution, noise pollution and light pollution have caused consequences such as global warm- ing, greenhouse effect, loss of habitats, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification and sea-level rise [8, 20]. However, there is a commu- nity that has been feeling the negative impact of human activities since the Roman Era. Ancient human attitudes toward the species Monachus Monachus (Mediterranean Monk Seal) have resulted in its current endangered state [19]. The Mediterranean Monk Seal suffered exploitation of its fur, oil and meat, its use in medicine and entertainment, and its role in mythology and superstition. So now the Mediterranean Monk Seal is considered the rarest and most en- dangered of all the seal species in the world, currently, there are only a few individuals left in the whole world and they can be found in the Madeira Island archipelago. This work proposes to raise aware- ness towards this very fragile ecosystem and species. We have seen that there is great potential in the use of interactive experiences to captivate and draw people’s attention to existing environmental problems[5, 15]. However, there is still much that can be explored to deliver educational content, in particular, to effectively educate teenagers towards sustainability issues since previous work has shown that interest and concern with environmental issues and 633