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a point of entry to the online resource and to Kyoto, ideally increasing visitor
interest in and use of the digital city. Isbister hopes the tour will also encourage
dialogue and relationships among those who participate, and increase expo-
sure to Kyoto's history among those who are friends and family of people who
participate in the tour.
In creating the agent, Isbister is focusing on storytelling strategies that will
produce an engaging experience for tour takers. She derived a list of abilities
for the agent by researching the behavior of actual tour guides in Kyoto. Isbis-
ter hopes the process of developing the agent's storytelling abilities will lead to
a contribution to the narrative intelligence/agent research domain, specifically
involving timing and duration strategies for situated storytelling, especially
to groups.
Researching the tour guide role
To prepare, Isbister went on several guided tours of Kyoto, making notes about
how tour guides did their work. She found that tour guides made use of illus-
trative stories frequently, supplementing the rich visual environment of the city
with explanations of how Japanese people, both past and present, made use of
these settings. Stories included things such as: descriptions of how a given site
was constructed and its history of destruction and reconstruction; descriptions
of peak historic events that happened at a given site; and descriptions of sea-
sonal events and customary activities that occur at the site. Tour guides also
reincorporated material from previous tours, describing what other visitors
said and did when they visited the sites.
The tour guides would introduce the stories upon arrival at the site, and
at specific points in the site that were directly relevant to the particular story.
While visitors took things in visually, the guide would create a narrative con-
text, providing visitors with stories they could share with fellow tour members,
as well as with people back home.
The tour guide would time his or her storytelling to the visitors' absorption
with the site at hand. That is, the guide would provide story context while the
visitors were engaged, and move on when it became clear that the visitors were
ready for a new venue. In addition, the guide would provide follow-up stories
to those that were met with particular interest by visitors.
To summarize, Isbister observed the following qualities in human tour
guide storytelling to groups: