Enabling Storytelling by Aphasics in an Augmented Home Environment

We present the design of a system for Aphasics that assist them in storytelling. Storytelling, in the sense of being able to relate recent and past experiences to relevant others, is considered to be crucial for the quality of life and psychological wellbeing of most people. The storytelling support system that we propose is primarily intended to be used by Aphasics in their postrehabilitation period. Our focus is on the creation of daily stories with the help of passively captured materials, hence emphasizing the need for fairly effortless interaction from the side of the end user. End-user requirements gathering was especially difficult in this project, because of the verbal limitations in our user group. Many requirements for the system were hence decided through consulting proxies of the Aphasics, such as their caregivers. The preliminary feedbacks on our design provide interesting insights for the design of a more complete storytelling system for Aphasics. We also discuss some interesting challenges from a technological and methodological point of view that arose in the course of the design.