Abstract

We introduce a class of systems that motivate and aid users to think and write about their personal experiences by presenting them with similar first-person narratives, which allows them to reflect on the connection between their experience and the story presented. These systems rely upon the narrative intelligence of humans to establish the relevance connections, and so can make use of story indexing techniques which do not require the system to have full story understanding. We present the Victorian Laptop, an implementation of such a system in the domain of travelogue. This system is designed to give users a richer connection to a place that they are visiting, and deeper engagement with their own experience of that site, by presenting them with first-person travelogues, which allows them to reflect on the connection between their own travel and the travel of others who have come before.