Abstract
Storytelling with physical artefacts provides young children with opportunities to explore and express their creativity. Phygital artefacts–physical objects imbued with embedded physical computing technology– further expand children’s expressive potential, providing multisensory experiences and opportunities for storytelling. This research focuses on enabling children aged 5 to 8 years to engage in storytelling using phygital artefacts, while empowering educators to tailor the interactions of those phygital artefacts via a companion software application. In parallel, the study examines the usage context and the physical computing materials necessary for creating such a toolkit. This involves identifying and empathising with primary users and understanding how storytelling activities are conducted with different artefacts in educational settings. A literature review underpins the research, and expert-based studies were conducted with educators and other domain experts, followed by user studies with pre-school and primary school children in educational settings. Insights from the literature and user studies yielded user requirements, which informed the technical decisions made for the toolkit, including the selection of an appropriate microcontroller as well as the necessary sensors, actuators, and power requirements, along with the development of its companion software application.