Design to Support Remembering

3. DESIGN TO SUPPORT REMEMBERING
Moderator: Elise van den Hoven | University of Technology Sydney
| Eindhoven University of Technology
| University of Dundee
| Australian Research Council’s Centre
of Excellence on Cognition and its Disorders

4. INTRODUCTION
Body text
ELISE VAN DEN HOVEN
Full professor
Project leader Materialising Memories
University of Technology Sydney
Eindhoven University of Technology
University of Dundee
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders

5. INTRODUCTION
GAIL KENNING
Artist, designer & researcher
Materialising Memories
University of Technology Sydney
Eindhoven University of Technology

6. INTRODUCTION
DOMÉNIQUE VAN GENNIP
Interaction design researcher
Materialising Memories
University of Technology Sydney
Eindhoven University of Technology

7. MATERIALISING MEMORIES:
WHAT IS IT?
Elise van den Hoven | University of Technology Sydney
| Eindhoven University of Technology
| University of Dundee
| Australian Research Council’s Centre of
Excellence on Cognition and its Disorders

8. MEMORIES Where would we be without our memories?

9. MEMORIES Inside Out
Pixar, 2015

10. MEMORIES
Autobiographical Memory (AM)
“memory for the events of one’s life” (Conway & Rubin, The structure of AM, 1993)
Functions include (Bluck, Alea, Habermas & Rubin, Social cognition, 2005)
• Directive function : using the past to guide thought and behaviour
• Self-representative function : creating a sense of identity-continuity
• Social function : developing, maintaining and nurturing relationships

11. PERSONALMEMORYMEDIA Memory cues
Van den Hoven & Eggen, Zeitschrift für die Psychologie, 2014

12. INTERACTIONDESIGN
Many remembering activities include technology
• Devices : mobile phones, laptops, tablets
• Communication : skype, hangout, chat, text
• Digital media : photos, videos, documents
• Apps/websites : Facebook, Pic Your Moment, i-remember.fr/en

13. ORIGINSOFMM PhD at “NatLab”
Van den Hoven & Eggen, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2008

14. DESIGNFORREMEMBERING
(Van den Hoven, Sas, Whittaker, Human-Computer Interaction, 2012)
Increasingly popular topic in both industry and academia
Integration of psychology, design and computer science
Related to: privacy, the cloud, internet of things
Possible approaches:
Lifelogging (e.g. Microsoft SenseCam, Google Glass)
Quantified self (e.g. quantifiedself.com)
Memory (media) support systems (e.g. Van den Hoven & Eggen, Personal
and Ubiquitous Computing, 2008)
technology
people
focus

15. DESIGNRESEARCH
Design-Oriented Research
(Fallman, 2003)
Generating knowledge through or for design
Knowledge:
• is the primary end-result, the product secondary
• can be about anything, e.g.: interaction style, user experience, future scenarios, methods
• is often qualitative

16. MATERIALISINGMEMORIES
Design research aims
(Van den Hoven, Memory Studies, 2014)
• Understand relation between personal media, remembering and
forgetting
• Investigate remembering experiences
• Design media products to support remembering experiences
For everyone: people with healthy memories & those with memory
challenges

17. MATERIALISINGMEMORIES
Long-term vision
• Achieving transdisciplinary contributions
• by integrating interaction design
• with behavioral and social sciences

18. INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP
Gail Kenning | University of Technology Sydney
| Eindhoven University of Technology

20. PHOTOTYPE
Doménique van Gennip | University of Technology Sydney
| Eindhoven University of Technology

21. Phototype = Photo prototype
•Shows personal photos
•Supports reminiscing
•Inspires serendipity
•Helps study of people’s
experiences and design
considerations
CASESTUDY–PHOTOTYPE

22. WHYWEREMINISCE
Reflection Share experiences Feeling better about self Portray identity
Boredom reduction Build relationships Enjoying one’s past

23. TOOMANYPHOTOS
take some photos… lots more photos… and now?
a few more… collapse…

24. HANDLINGPHOTOOVERLOAD
•Reduce the number of photos captured
•Ease management of photos (tagging, searching, curation)
•Enable in-the-moment selection of the right photos
•Find ways to make photos valuable without much effort
•Help people not feel guilty about ‘abandoning’ their photos

25. SERENDIPITY
• Serendipitous reminiscing is associative
• Happens within the context of other activities
• A (sudden) development of one’s perspective is key
• Such reminiscing is both remarkable and unremarkable
Serendipitous reminiscing is the casual recollection and
reliving of past experiences, for enjoyment, restorative, and
social purposes, brought about by chance encounters with
things that remind of one’s past.

26. Six mock-ups were designed to gather feedback
on designing for reminiscing
MOCK-UPS

27. WATCHINGFORYOU

28. FINDINGSFROMMOCK-UPS
•People see value in revisiting their personal photos
•Such a display may be a distraction and/or a social (mis)fit
•Watching For You felt intrusive (no camera, please!)
•Pointers for design:
•Offer a basic viewing experience
•Make a design flexible to adapt to situations & desires

29. 7” touch display
Runs on a Raspberry Pi 3
Design resembles a
digital photo frame
PHOTOTYPE

30. early
after two hours
after four hours close
medium distance
far away
Swiping out the left-most photo
when let go with red indicators visible
adjusts ratings -0.2 and +0.2
swiping the midpoint to the left
PhotoSoup DualDisplay

31. INUSEATHOME

32. INUSEATHOME

33. USAGEDATA

34. FEEDBACKONUSE
“There are shots of the two
grandchildren just when they were born.
How fascinated we were! It was really nice to
remember and see images of different stages
since they were born” (P9)
“I was upset with my wife for a
few days. I was not planning to talk to her
and those pictures helped me to take the initiative
and I spoke to her every day. So this was all
about emotions…” (P6)
“My daughter was quite
interested at first… After a while, she was just
happy to look at the pictures rather than
touching it” (P1)
“I enjoyed not knowing what I
am getting. I didn’t hate anything, not
even the crappy photos” (P2)

35. INCONCLUSION
•Bringing up the past can lead to meaningful moments; we
labelled this serendipitous reminiscing.
•Design of Phototype did not challenge views on framed photos.
•With more personal meaning invested into a cue, cued memories
are less likely to be sudden or surprising.
•Cueing memories with personal photos can be serendipitous, or
miss the mark and be undesirable.
•It’s a challenge to make interactive systems adapt well.

36. WRAP UP

37. WRAPUP
Wrap up of this session:
• Computer memory is not similar to Human memory
• Memories are reconstructed
• Blurring of understanding differences between technology,
media and memories
• Gap between scientific theory and people’s experiences
• Functions of AM are integrated in everyday life

38. WRAPUP
Some conclusions of MM:
• We don’t design memories, but we can support remembering
• We don’t want to enhance memory performance, but we do
want to support remembering practices
• People own many memory cues, but are often unaware
• People use autobiographical memories anywhere, anytime
• Technology plays a big role, but is continuously changing

39. QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

41. MATERIALISINGMEMORIES Digital copies:
www.materialisingmemories.com

42. REFERENCES
Bluck, S., Alea, N., Habermas, T., & Rubin, D. C. (2005). A tale of three functions: The self–reported uses
of autobiographical memory. Social Cognition, 23(1), pp. 91-117
Conway, M.A. & Rubin, D.C. (1993). The structure of autobiographical memory. In: Theories of memory.
Psychology Press, Hove, pp. 103-137
Fallman, D. (2003). Design-oriented Human-Computer Interaction. In Proc. of CHI'03, ACM Press, pp.
225-232
Hoven, E. van den (2014). A future-proof past: Designing for remembering experiences. Memory Studies,
vol. 7, issue 3, July 2014, pp. 373-387.
Hoven, E. van den & Eggen, B. (2008). Informing Augmented Memory System design through
Autobiographical Memory theory. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 12 (6), pp. 433-443
Hoven, E. van den and Eggen, B. (2014). The Cue is Key: Design for Real-Life Remembering. Zeitschrift für
Psychologie, vol. 222, issue 2, pp. 110-117
Hoven, E. van den, Frens, J., Aliakseyeu, D., Martens, J-B., Overbeeke, K. & Peters, P. (2007). Design
Research & Tangible Interaction. In Proc. of TEI'07, pp. 109-116
Hoven, E. van den, Sas, C. & Whittaker, S. (2012). Introduction to this Special Issue on Designing for
Personal Memories: Past, Present and Future. Human-Computer Interaction, 27 (1-2), pp. 1-12
Rogers, Y., Sharp, H. & Preece, J. (2015). Interaction design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 4rd
Edition. Wiley, Chichester, UK