Investigating the Effect of Mixed-reality Travelogue Creation in Promoting Youth’s Positive Character Development

With the accessibility of digital platforms (e.g., social media, games) and the vividness of related digital experiences, digital natives have less tendency toward direct experiences in the real world. Mixed reality (MR) or augmented reality (AR), combining virtual settings with physical environments, can be a promising approach to arousing youth’s curiosity and motivating their engagements in the real world. Using mixed-reality technologies (e.g., mobile AR), a person visiting a physical place can creatively combine images of virtual items (e.g., a virtual pet) with location-based real-world images (e.g., a
landmark). A sequence of composite images at different locations, like a storyboard, forms a travelogue that shows and tells an imaginative adventure story (e.g., exploring with the virtual pet).

Studies of games and gamification suggest that facilitating users to create stories analogous to their real-world behaviors can enhance intrinsic motivation, leading to long-term engagement (Nicholson 2015; Rapp 2017). Enabling youngsters to create stories in mixed-reality travelogues can motivate real-world exploration. Moreover, developing a travel narrative involves adopting fictional characters’ perspectives and imagining possible paths along the journey, which can enhance one’s potential in perspective taking and mental simulation. In the long run, the young generation will be able to develop corresponding character strengths (Peterson & Seligman 2004).

This project will be a generative and exploratory study. It will investigate the possibility of engaging young people in exploring the real world and investigate the effects of mixed-reality travelogue creation on their curiosity about the real world, abilities of imagining being in different situations and adopting different perspectives. The process will involve designing and developing a mixed-reality travelogue system (see Figures 1&2) that helps users compose stories. Before visiting a real-world location, users create characters and imagine adventures at the location by using generative-AI tools. While
visiting, they dynamically composite the AI-generated contents onto on-site images using mixed-reality technologies. After visiting, they review the composite images.
We plan to involve 60 young participants in field trials of the system. Each participant will take pre- and post-trial surveys that assess one’s strength of curiosity (based on existing scales like Kashdan et al. 2018’s five-dimensional curiosity scale), tendency of imagining, and ability of perspective taking (based on existing scales like Davis 1980’s fantasy and perspective-taking subscales). Changes in assessment results between surveys will provide insights on promoting related aspects in youth’s character development.