Stories that feel alive

A defining aspect of this work was designing a real-time story generation experience that blends narrative, music, visuals, and interaction into a cohesive system.

Rather than treating stories as text read aloud, the experience was designed to feel like a living storybook. As a story unfolds, on-theme music, adaptive sound design, generative imagery, and expressive text styling reinforce mood and pacing. When a customer makes a choice or changes tone, the visuals, music, and rhythm shift with the narrative. This responsiveness makes the experience feel intentional and immersive.

Grounding imagination in real moments

I explored how generative storytelling could be grounded in personally meaningful inputs instead of existing purely in fantasy. The system can optionally draw from a customer’s interests and recent photo albums, such as a family camping trip or weekend getaway, and reinterpret those moments as beautifully told stories with a creative twist.

For example, camping photos can become an illustrated adventure where familiar people and places appear in a magical or exaggerated setting. This anchors exploration in real memory, transforming everyday moments into stories that feel intimate and worth revisiting.

Making storytelling feel coherent and trustworthy

Customer feedback showed that early generative stories often felt unreliable. Details like names or character traits were lost, revisions contradicted earlier scenes, and tone changes did not always land.

I focused on interaction models that make behavior predictable and understandable. Stories were structured into clear beats such as setup, choice, consequence, and wrap-up, so customers could see how their input influenced what came next. Explicit controls like “make it scarier,” “change the ending,” or “speed things up” were treated as supported actions, helping customers iterate with confidence.