Engaging children with digital storytelling for health, education, and entertainment

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business commercialisation project

Dubit

60,000 MRI exams are carried out on four-to-ten-year-olds in the UK every year, and yet getting children to stay still for an MRI scan is no easy task. The procedure is noisy, the space confined; the process can take as long as 90 minutes. Consequently, 58% of MRIs on five-to-ten-year-olds are performed under general anaesthetic, which is costly and comes with health risks.

Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice , Professor of Immersive Storytelling, was the Principal Investigator for Dubit's Innovate UK-funded R&D project VR & Mixed-Realities Play Kit to Prepare Under 10s for an MRI Scan. The initiative focused on creating a mixed realities play kit aimed at helping children undergo MRI scans without the need for general anaesthesia. On this project, Dylan collaborated with academics from the Glasgow School of Arts, the University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

Dubit

Dylan co-created an engaging play kit for children aged four to ten, blending physical, augmented, and virtual play to demystify MRI scanners and the role of radiographers. The kit helps children prepare for scans by practising staying still, which is crucial for successful imaging. Creative workshops with children-inspired innovative features, like using a phone's gyroscope in a game where stillness keeps virtual butterflies from flying away, turning preparation into a fun, interactive experience.

The kits are now in the Sheffield Children’s Hospital NHS Trust and will also be trialled in 10 other hospitals in the UK, as Dylan has received funding from the University of Plymouth to collaborate with the Starlight Children’s Foundation. The charity develops products aimed at assisting children in healthcare settings, championing the importance of play and advocating for every seriously ill child's right to it. Their mission is to "transform children's health through play," bringing joy to hospitalised children and their families.

VR MRI for learning about the process of having a scan

This is part of a VR game to help children learn about the process of having an MRI scan.

Using the app with a cardboard headset

This video shows how users can select virtual reality play on the play kit app and then insert the phone into a cardboard VR headset for another part of preparing to have an MRI scan.

AR mode

The mixed realities play kit has an augmented reality mode to allow children to role-play being a radiographer and learn about their job.

Children's Dreams of Future UK Treescapes Envisioned through Games

Dylan has also worked on the Digital Voices of the Future project, which aimed to foster a love of trees in young people through games and to help children plant, nurture, and care for trees. Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, it was led by Dr Simon Carr at the University of Cumbria, in collaboration with academics from Middlesex University and Manchester Metropolitan University. Alongside this team, Dylan worked with Dr Eleanor Dare to devise and run workshops that explored how to engage late primary and early secondary school children in the co-design and production of key elements of game development.

Eleanor Dare

What do today’s children want from storytelling tech? Just how do we make great products for children? How can we make entertainment educational without being offputtingly earnest? To exploit the endless opportunities emerging tech offers, it makes sense to bring children into the design and production process. Education and entertainment need not be mutually exclusive. Tech and more traditional forms of storytelling don’t have to compete. Rather they can enjoy a symbiotic relationship, a cross-pollination of platforms and practices.

Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice
Professor of Immersive Storytelling

Meet the researcher

Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice advises software companies on how best to engage children in an educational and meaningful way. A passionate advocate of children as natural storytellers, she researches how children engage with digital storytelling and other emerging technologies, focusing on the design of storytelling, games and play on a range of platforms, including apps, augmented and virtual reality, and television.

In research crossing academia and the media industry, Dylan uses methods from social sciences combined with those from art and design. Tapping into the full potential of storytelling for health, education, and entertainment, she uses graphic narratives to analyse data, think through drawing, and tell stories. Dylan blogs about her findings, and produces reports for industry, peer-reviewed journal articles, and book chapters.

Commercialisation in SHAPE disciplines

The Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business is at the forefront pioneering the commercialisation approaches within SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) research.

This initiative showcases the innovative ways our academics transform research into sustainable impact, collaborating with partners to address modern world challenges through creative commercial models.

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Locally, we co-create sustainable solutions to complex problems in order to build resilient and thriving neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. This work transcends geographical, social and political boundaries to become applicable on a global level.

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SHAPE – Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy