Saga Studio lets you play-pretend with your characters in a fun and easy way to create dope stories that you can export across formats.
Problem
We generate stories with 'word processors' not 'story processors'. Current language technology is rule based and rigid (like words), struggling with complex linguistic tasks and nuances (that make stories shine). Writing stories is not fun.
Insights
Children tell stories as a way to express themselves– they use their hands, bodies across time and space to tell them. What if we build an interface that echoes this mode of interaction?
Storytelling is a natural way to learn and communicate. What if we build a natural and inviting way to tell stories?
LLMs are great for coherence and not so great for consistency. What if we build an app that leans into this?
Solution
Experience: Mimicking children play pretend, we made numerous versions of the interface to achieve the right balance between structure and fun. The concept takes inspiration from the Kurt Vonnegut map.
Technical: Below a screen capture of the front-end. We used Llama 3 & chat-GPT 3.5 along with Firebase.
Output
With a simple click, Saga Studio can export captivating stories, just like the one below (Audio only) - produced in Aug 2023.
Sagastudio.ai
Outcome
Saga studio was built in order to explore the opportunities to develop new kind of creative tools that are discontinuous from the status quo (i.e. that don't require the same concepts or constraints from current generation of tools).
Saga studio enabled kids to express themselves with a level of nuance that previously was inaccessible due to the way language is being taught. From syntax, to semantics, to structure, and so on. Saga Studio leads with a playful structure, ignores syntax, and lets semantics emerge with its usage.
Saga studio was tested with multiple kids (aged 8-12) and in different settings (school, home).
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In all occasions, there was a strong appetite to engage with tools that enable learning and play without relying on the understanding of traditional concepts (like what does a genre means, or what is a type of story).
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Kids welcomed the ability to create resonant stories in multiple formats in a way that felt similar to the way they play pretend.
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Another learning is helping technology draw out nuance from simple concepts (i.e. a position in the screen translates into character emotional changes).
Next steps
Explore how to enable storytelling in a more collaborative fashion.