Metamorpheus: Interactive, Affective, and Creative Dream Narration
  Through Metaphorical Visual Storytelling
Qian Wan Xin Feng Yining Bei Zhiqi Gao Zhicong Lu
Human emotions are essentially molded by lived experiences, from which we
construct personalised meaning. The engagement in such meaning-making process
has been practiced as an intervention in various psychotherapies to promote
wellness. Nevertheless, to support recollecting and recounting lived
experiences in everyday life remains under explored in HCI. It also remains
unknown how technologies such as generative AI models can facilitate the
meaning making process, and ultimately support affective mindfulness. In this
paper we present Metamorpheus, an affective interface that engages users in a
creative visual storytelling of emotional experiences during dreams.
Metamorpheus arranges the storyline based on a dream's emotional arc, and
provokes self-reflection through the creation of metaphorical images and text
depictions. The system provides metaphor suggestions, and generates visual
metaphors and text depictions using generative AI models, while users can apply
generations to recolour and re-arrange the interface to be visually affective.
Our experience-centred evaluation manifests that, by interacting with
Metamorpheus, users can recall their dreams in vivid detail, through which they
relive and reflect upon their experiences in a meaningful way.