About

The research focused on the use of stories as a means of communication, particularly in the medical field. It explored how stories, which are not bound by domain or culture, can be effective for sharing knowledge and fostering empathy, especially among health professionals. The research examined the concept of “storymaking,” which refers to the construction, recall, comprehension, and telling of stories. The aim was to investigate how stories could be shared through the Web and how they could be indexed for better accessibility.

The research raised questions about the creation of a flexible metadata scheme for annotating stories, recognising the inherent ambiguity in their interpretation. It also sought to draw on narratology to explore ways of tagging stories to reveal interesting connections, comparing current social tagging systems with more expressive and usable methods of indexing.

Approach

The research aimed to investigate the representational requirements for a metadata scheme that supports story creation, recall, comprehension, and telling. The team surveyed the literature on narratology and storytelling in organisations, analysing online storytelling among General Practitioners. They sought to develop a schema that would support stories without imposing restrictions on content or context. A hybrid schema was created, incorporating point models, feature models, and affect models.

To explore story annotation, a user interface prototype was developed, allowing participants (both health professionals and non-experts) to tag stories. The prototype guided users with both freeform and structured annotations. Grounded Theory was used to analyse the interactions of 24 participants.

The stories proved to be engaging, eliciting emotional responses and triggering the sharing of new stories. The complexity of the stories varied, with participants crafting suggestions in the ‘Indexical’ dimensions while being more spontaneous in the ‘Relational’ dimensions. The editor’s indexing was seen as both helpful and stifling. No significant differences were observed between knowledge media researchers and medical professionals in task behaviour, although participants often required assistance in navigating the interface and expressing their thoughts clearly.

This was the first annotation screen.

This was the story features screen.