The use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for writing has sparked controversy both among readers and writers. On one hand, writers are concerned that LLMs will deprive them of agency and ownership, and readers are concerned about spending their time on text generated by soulless machines. On the other hand, AI-assistance can improve writing as long as writers can conform to publisher policies, and as long as readers can be assured that a text has been verified by a human. We argue that a system that captures the provenance of interaction with an LLM can help writers retain their agency, conform to policies, and communicate their use of AI to publishers and readers transparently. Thus we propose HaLLMark, a tool for visualizing the writer’s interaction with the LLM. We evaluated HaLLMark with 13 creative writers, and found that it helped them retain a sense of control and ownership of the text.

Many creative writing tasks (e.g., fiction writing) require authors to write complex narrative components (e.g., characterization, events, dialogue) over the course of a long story. Similarly, literary scholars need to manually annotate and interpret texts to understand such abstract components. In this paper, we explore how Natural Language Processing (NLP) and interactive visualization can help writers and scholars in such scenarios. To this end, we present Portrayal, an interactive visualization system for analyzing characters in a story. Portrayal extracts natural language indicators from a text to capture the characterization process and then visualizes the indicators in an interactive interface. We evaluated the system with 12 creative writers and scholars in a one-week-long qualitative study. Our findings suggest Portrayal helped writers revise their drafts and create dynamic characters and scenes. It helped scholars analyze characters without the need for any manual annotation, and design literary arguments with concrete evidence.

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is an interactive storygame hybrid whose core mechanics include collaborative problem solving and storytelling. ARGs are also participatory experiences, because game designers dynamically adjust content in response to players' actions as game play progresses. What if the participatory process was extended during the design phase of an ARG as well? Few, if any, studies have explored how to include player populations in the ARG design process -- especially ARGs that target youth. In this paper, we share the process we followed to design a large-scale ARG to promote scientific inquiry for teenagers (13-17 years old) by partnering with them. Our findings suggest that co-designing with youth resulted in novel design features in the final game, and gave us insight into adolescent attitudes toward various scientific concepts. We also share co-design techniques that were not as effective and offer suggestions for future approaches.

This paper presents insights from designers of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) regarding the design tactics they employ to integrate participatory storytelling and "authentic fiction" into the transmedia experiences they create. Our approach was motivated by recent efforts in HCI to more closely align the development of interaction design theory to the craft knowledge and experiences of designers themselves. The resulting insights enhance our understanding of design approaches that a diverse group of ARG producers follow to create interactive, participatory narratives. We outline narrative-specific themes to support designers who craft similar interactive experiences.

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is a form of transmedia storytelling that engages players in scavenger hunt-like missions to collectively uncover, interpret, and reassemble the fragments of a story that is distributed across multiple media, platforms, and locations. ARGs are participatory experiences, because players have a central role in reconstructing the storyline. Furthermore, players interact with the game as themselves, not via avatars. Although transmedia formats like ARGs have garnered increasing attention in entertainment and education, most have been targeted for adults 18 and older. Few studies have explored the design process of education-based ARGs for children. In this paper, we detail the design and implementation of an ARG for middle school students (13--15 years old). We describe the strategies we used to distribute story elements across various media and to encourage players to participate in an authentic inquiry process. We found that a "protagonist by proxy", or in-game character with whom players related closely, served as a strong motivator and a model for positive participation. We highlight student interactions and offer insights for designers who implement ARGs and similar immersive learning experiences.

Successful Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), such as The Lost Experience, I Love Bees and Urgent EVOKE have solicited thousands of active participants and, often, millions of spectators from around the world. ARGs require significant resources not only in terms of initial design, but also in implementation, since live, dynamic interplay between players and designers is an inherent aspect of their interactive storylines. This paper outlines a novel design framework for creating reusable ARGs that will help extend the lifespan of ARGs and allow them to permeate new domains such as education. The framework includes three key reusable design objectives (replayability, adaptability, extensibility), each of which can be enacted at different levels of depth. We also identify barriers to reusable ARGs and design strategies for overcoming those barriers, drawing upon ARG designer interviews and existing ARGs.

We describe the first iteration of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to lead players into a newly enfranchised relationship with history and engage them in scientific thinking and information literacy practices. We found that the points at which the game's mythology blurred the lines between fact and fiction prompted middle school students to move beyond rote memorization of content. Instead, they began to question, analyze, and make hypotheses about the data presented. However, striking a meaningful balance between "true" history and imagined events poses new design challenges. We present a formative typology of counterfactual design patterns that can help designers, educators, and players locate interesting fault lines in reality that facilitate the expansion of ARG mythologies.