E-broidery in Wonderland : a pilot study on tangible narratives with interactive e-textile

Abstract

While tangible narratives (TNs) move intangible stories into the physical world, research has often prioritized technological novelty or external goals over the narrative itself. To address the gap, this paper presents "E-broidery in Wonderland", a collection of interactive e-textile artifacts for storytelling. Four electronic embroidery prototypes were created for the story of Alice in Wonderland to explore how prior knowledge of stories influences user interaction (RQ1) and to assess the impact of e-textiles on a familiar story in TNs (RQ2). Through a mixed-methods pilot study with 12 participants, a critical pattern emerges between users' familiarity and their primary interaction with the tangible narrative artifacts, demonstrating that narrative familiarity is a powerful yet double-edged tool in tangible narrative framework.