Storybook Futures: A Public Installation for Speculative Narrative Exploration
Authors: Scott Carter Published in: Proceedings of the 2026 ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX ’26), 2026
Storybook Futures is a public interactive-media installation for exploring speculative narratives. Inspired by Storybook, a web platform for creating illustrated stories that support perspective-taking and career reflection, Storybook Futures is a walk-up kiosk in which people can see themselves in a possible future. A tablet-sized controller lets participants choose among dozens of seeded paths and then branch through an illustrated story by selecting between two deliberately value-laden futures: one oriented toward well-being and one oriented toward financial advancement. A synchronized large display shows each chapter at audience scale, while a webcam-driven self-insertion pipeline regenerates the current scene using the participant’s face. The result is a walk-up demo that combines branching narrative and generative text and imagery and inspires questions of people’s place in the world, surveillance, and the role of AI in both. We position the system as both a narrative experience and a conversation prompt about perspective-taking, labor futures, and the politics of interactive media.