Personalizing interactive digital storytelling in archaeological museums: the CHESS project Laia Pujol 1 , Maria Roussou 2 , Stavrina Poulou 1 , Olivier Balet 3 , Maria Vayanou 2 , Yannis Ioannidis 2 1 The Acropolis Museum (Athens, Greece), {Laia.Pujol, Stavroula.Poulou}@theacropolismuseum.gr 2 University of Athens (Athens, Greece), {mroussou, vayanou, yannis}@di.uoa.gr 3 Diginext (Toulouse, France), Olivier.Balet@diginext.fr Abstract. The aim of this paper is to present the state-of-the art research project in digital storytelling for museums titled CHESS (Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling). The goal of CHESS is to research, implement and evaluate an innovative conceptual and technological framework that will enable both the experiencing of personalised interactive stories for visitors of cultural sites and the authoring of narrative structures by the cultural content experts. We believe that the new modality of extended museum visit that CHESS proposes will make cultural heritage sites more attractive and effectively conveyed to audiences (especially to “digital natives”) and will provide new means to leverage and exploit the existing digital libraries that have been developed since several years in the cultural heritage world. Keywords: archaeological museums, interactive digital storytelling, mobile devices, personalization. 1 Introduction Archaeological museums can be uninteresting to many people because they do not connect to the personal narratives that visitors carry with them and, implicitly or explicitly, constantly re-build. Indeed, memory institutions need to sustain, not to say reinforce, their attractiveness and the interest of their visitors if they do not want to find themselves standing still “on the conveyer belt of history” (Serota 1996). They must make cultural heritage more engaging, especially for the young generations of “digital natives”. A challenge for cultural heritage sites is to capitalise on the pervasive use of such media, while also facing the competition from the leisure-based entertainment industry, which attracts visitors through spectacular exhibits and events with experiential, but also even educational and cultural qualities. However, digital cultural heritage content and assets can be expensive, technically difficult to make, and hard to renew. This is where novel research kicks in. Recent investigations in interactive digital storytelling, personalization and adaptivity, and mixed reality, coupled with mobility-enabling systems, promise to make not only cultural heritage sites more attractive but also to provide new means to convey cultural knowledge, interpretation, and analysis more effectively to audiences. Moreover, novel digital technologies will provide opportunities to leverage and exploit, in new forms of cultural interactive experiences, the existing digital libraries that have been developed since several years in the cultural heritage world. The aim of our paper is to present the on-going EU funded project CHESS (Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling - www.chessexperience.eu ). The principal objective of CHESS is to research, implement and evaluate an innovative conceptual and technological framework that will enable both the experiencing of personalised interactive stories for visitors of cultural sites, and the authoring of narrative structures by the cultural content experts.