Tinker Tales: A Tangible Dialogue System for Child–AI Co-Creative Storytelling

Conversational AI agents are increasingly explored as creative partners, yet how conversation design shapes child–AI dialogue in co-creative settings remains underexplored. We present Tinker Tales, a tangible dialogue system for child–AI collaborative storytelling, in which educational frameworks—narrative development and social-emotional learning—are instantiated as conversation design, shaping how the agent engages children across four narrative stages. The system combines a physical storytelling board, NFC-embedded toys, and a mobile app mediating multimodal interaction through tangible manipulation and voice-based dialogue. We conducted a home-based user study with 10 children (ages 6–8) across two conversation design conditions varying in how the agent structured elaboration, with and without educational scaffolding. Our findings show that prompt framing shapes the form and consistency of children's narrative contributions, structuring how they participate in co-creative dialogue with AI.