A future-proof past: Designing for remembering experiences

Abstract

Personal remembering can be heavily influenced by the context in which it takes place, which includes external factors such as people, locations and things. These things can be physical, digital or a combination of both, such as digital photographs displayed on a physical screen. Together, these media and media carriers can act as memory cues, which in turn can be purposely created for the support of remembering experiences. The aim of this article is to show the challenges, potential and opportunities of this multidisciplinary research area, Materialising Memories, which creates interactive designs to be used in context. This will be illustrated through the presentation of two design case studies supporting photo sharing in everyday life: Cueb and 4Photos.

Keywords

autobiographical memories design research digital media human–computer interaction internal and external cognition memory cues

Introduction

Not so long ago, when you would visit family and friends, photo albums would be lying around in their living rooms. Strategically placed, these albums were ready to be picked up and used for whoever showed any interest in the often carefully categorised collections. Because these, usually colourful, decorated albums were present and visible, people visiting would notice and could decide to bring them up in conversation.

Nowadays, most photo collections are digital, uncategorised and accumulating on laptops, cameras and mobile phones, devices that typically show a black screen when not activated and have a generic exterior, not providing any clues about the materials stored inside.

With the advent of digital media (or external representations in the broadest sense) a lot has changed in what cues people’s memories in everyday life. This example shows that guests are less likely to prompt stories when digital photos are invisible to them, but the same holds for the owners and creators of the media, they are not reminded of their photos either. Digital media, consisting of bits and bytes, are just not as visible and present as physical or tangible media are.

Visibility is just one example of why the physical world is important for contemporary remembering practices, which often involve digital media. This article will show how we can use interaction design to combine both physical and digital in an attempt to better support remembering activities. It will include the use of new technologies and new interactive devices, and ultimately the aim is to create remembering experiences and to make our past more future-proof.

The connections between memory and design will be explained in the next section through related work. In the section that follows, two case studies, focusing on informal leisurely remembering in the context of the home, will show what the Materialising Memories body of research entails. This article will continue with a discussion, conclusion and future challenges.

From remembering to designing

The word remembering comes from the late Latin rememorari, which can be translated as a ‘call to mind’. The activity of remembering is a cognitive activity, bringing knowledge from the past to the conscious awareness through a repetitive process of reconstruction. This activity, however, can be cued by internal and external sources. Internal cues are only present in thoughts (Berntsen, 2009). Internally cued remembering, or internal remembering, therefore, focuses on the processes happening in an individual’s mind (see section Internal remembering). On the other hand, remembering can be very much influenced by external memory cues, which are present in the physical surroundings (Berntsen, 2009); examples include locations, sensorial experiences or people (see section ‘External remembering’). Interestingly, to some extent this external influence can be purposely created to support or facilitate specific remembering experiences (see sections ‘Designing experiences for the process’ and ‘Remembering experiences’ for an overview of existing work), which is the aim of the Materialising Memories body of research (see section ‘Materialising Memories’).

Internal remembering

Human remembering is a complicated process that is not completely understood. Various approaches are used to study human remembering, including finding neurological evidence for memory structures in the brain and doing careful psychological experiments testing people’s remembering capabilities. Together these approaches are used in an ongoing effort to unravel the workings of human memory, which includes the description of an extensive range of postulated as well as verified memory types (256 were mentioned in literature according to Tulving, 2007).

In some areas of memory research, both neurological and psychological evidence come together, which happened in the area of episodic and autobiographical memory. These two memory types focus on the individual (as opposed to, for example, collective and cultural memory) and appear to be closely related. Only recently, Conway (2009) postulated his theory that episodic memories can form the basis for autobiographical memories. Episodic memories contain summaries of personally experienced events (Conway, 2009) that are expected to be used solely for personal goal processing and, therefore, have a short life span, a maximum of a week. Autobiographical memories, on the other hand, can be remembered much longer than episodic memories and are defined as the memories of events in someone’s personal life (Conway and Rubin, 1993). Both memory types have some similar characteristics since they result from one another. For example, they both do not have to be veridical, they can be activated by means of memory cues, which trigger reconstruction (Guenther, 1998) and repeated retrieval results in rehearsal (Conway, 2009).

Summarising, the term internal remembering, as used in this article, describes internal cognitive activities, such as thinking, experiencing and sensing, which can occur without any external influences and result in personal remembering.

External remembering

Even though, remembering occurs by definition at least partially internally, the term external remembering in this article refers to the influence of the external world (the physical or tangible components, such as objects, locations and people, are called ‘physical context’ in the field of interaction design). Despite the use of different terminologies, the distinction between internal and external remembering (in this article) is explained in detail in Sutton et al. (2010), and external remembering is quite similar to their description of distributed-scaffolding cognition.

The foundation of external remembering is the fact that external influences can be internalised and included in memory reconstruction in a highly dynamic interactive process. In general, this inclusion of external factors in internal cognition is called distributed cognition (Hollan et al., 2000). Among other things, distributed cognition can be socially distributed and can involve coordination between internal and external influences. It cannot be separated from culture and effects over time in complex environments. (For an overview of distributed cognition in relation to memory, see Michaelian and Sutton, 2013.) The cognitive benefits of different external representations (Rogers et al., 2011) can (1) reduce the memory load; (2) support computational offloading; and (3) facilitate annotating and cognitive tracing. Thus, the reduction of the memory load through the use of external representations could be realised through design.

Because the aim of this article is to show that remembering experiences can be supported through dedicated designs, external remembering will be divided into factors that can be designed or purposely created to some extent, for example, the environment and sensory-perceptual experiences, and the ones that cannot, for example, people.

An important external remembering factor that cannot be designed but can have an influence on remembering is people and the social aspects of remembering. The memory types that include other people’s knowledge are also called socially distributed remembering (Sutton et al., 2010) after socially distributed cognition (Roberts, 1964, as quoted in Hollan et al., 2000). One example of a socially distributed memory type is transactive memory (Wegner et al., 1985), which describes groups of people who share their memory systems; for example, this can result in a person being aware of someone else’s memories and knowing that communication with that person provides access to these memories (for an overview, see Barnier et al., 2008).

A closely related example of socially distributed remembering is collective memory (Harris et al., 2008), which has the outsider’s perspective. Collective memory describes shared memories of past events in groups, which can range from a couple of individuals up to the size of a nation or culture. Over time, these memories come to resemble each other more and more. Despite the lack of an agreement or a definition (Harris et al., 2008), collective memory clearly identifies and incorporates external remembering factors that can be influenced through design, such as museums, books and libraries.

The impact of design on external remembering is a long-term one. We do not yet understand much about the influence of our material world on people’s memories and which variables play a role. One way of investigating this is by purposely creating different memory cues and different memory-cue presentations. The focus in this article is particularly on combining the physical and the digital dimension and to ‘materialise memories’. This means that the focus is on external memory cues purposely created by people, which can be physical (e.g. souvenirs), digital (e.g. digital photos) and hybrid (e.g. digital media displayed on a physical device) (Kirk and Sellen, 2010). External memory cues can come in all shapes and sizes, for example, photos, photo albums, furniture, locations, web sites, movies, sounds, music, and odours.

People are able and willing to purposely create memory cues for later use by themselves and others. The latter was shown in a study inviting families to create time capsules for their unborn grandchildren (Petrelli et al., 2009); the participants put significant amounts of time and effort in their time capsules and all requested the authors for more time. The resulting memory cues were mostly of a physical nature because of the lack of trust in technology to be around in 25 years or more. In the short term, people nowadays create mostly digital memory cues; the number of digital photographs taken has exploded over the last decade, for example each week in May 2010, 1 billion unique photographs were uploaded to Facebook (Sarvas and Frohlich, 2011). This trend does not limit itself to photos, just look at email, music, video, documents, sensor data and environmental conditions. The vast majority people collect is for mnemonic reasons, mostly intended for retrospective remembering (for an overview, see Sarvas and Frohlich, 2011). People collect because they can (Van House and Churchill, 2008), and creation is no longer the problem, but curation (deciding what to delete, what to keep and how to organise) and retrieval of media are.

Not only memory cues can be designed and/or purposely created, also the presentation and management of these memory cues, for example, the implementation of the curation and retrieval process in everyday life. These memory cues, their presentation and management are embedded in the material world and are part of complex settings, including the location, objects and people.

Designing experiences

As mentioned above, the external world can, to some extent, be deliberately created or manipulated to support or (re-)create remembering experiences. In order to support people to have remembering experiences, existing or newly created media could be used as memory cues, and cues in turn could be presented using dedicated devices. Before giving examples of such attempts (see the next section), the notion and process of designing experiences will first be clarified.

The case studies presented in this article were executed in the field of interaction design. This subfield of design focuses on interactive products, that is, products that contain embedded electronics that respond to people’s actions (Rogers et al., 2011). It all started with computers (in the closely related but narrower field called human–computer interaction or HCI), but nowadays homes, cars, toys, household appliances and all kinds of smaller, less complex products are included, such as jewellery and clothing. Interaction design deals with the conception, implementation and evaluation of these interactive products or systems. Design-oriented research (Fallman, 2003) focuses on generating knowledge through design, for example, through the creation of currently non-existing interactive products that aim to solve a human need. The case studies presented in this article do this in a user-centred¹ or people-oriented manner (Hoven et al., 2007). Traditional HCI and interaction design used to focus more on usability (how usable is an interactive system), but recently much research focuses on the synthesis and also analysis of user experiences. A user experience is defined as ‘a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service’ (ISO FDIS 9241-210:2009). This would include someone’s emotions, physical and psychological responses and behaviours, before, during and after the interaction with an interactive product or system. Therefore, remembering can also be an experience resulting from a person’s interaction with a product or system, and the design of an interactive product can be targeted towards the facilitation or elicitation of a remembering experience.²

Having such a remembering experience is not the same as reliving the original event, it could also entail that the activity which includes remembering, for example, the sharing of memories with others, is an experience in itself. This experience is often targeted to be pleasant and the interactive product easy to use.

Remembering experiences

This section will show design research examples of interaction design aiming to facilitate remembering experiences. As mentioned before, this can focus on the media that can serve as memory cues, which can be anything from a thought, mood, feeling, location, or person to the often-used photos, videos, smells, sounds and souvenirs (Hoven and Eggen, 2008). However, the focus can also be on the devices or systems that record and/or play these media. Sellen and Whittaker (2010) identified five types of remembering that could be supported through interactive systems, the five R’s: recollecting, reminiscing, retrieving, reflecting and remembering intentions. Systems could focus on a diverse range of activities (Sellen and Whittaker, 2010: 69) supporting reflection and self-understanding, being creative, expressing ourselves, constructing and displaying ideas of family, preserving and protecting the things that connect us to our past, helping us hide away or protect us from the things that are painful, strengthening our social bonds through reminiscing. Several studies have been done to come up with design guidelines for these so-called augmented memory systems: for example, Stevens et al. (2003), Hoven and Eggen (2008), Kirk and Sellen (2010) and Whittaker et al. (2012).

Forgetting or not having access to information in the future is seen as an undesirable state, for example, because it seems irreversible and you never know what you will need or want in the future (which Churchill and Ubois, 2008, call prospective retrospective). Very often, it is incorrectly assumed that as long as everything is recorded, this equals remembering and prevents forgetting (Hoven and Eggen, 2008; Sellen and Whittaker, 2010). This is evident from the popular lifelogging trend: effortless and all-encompassing digital capturing of everything someone experiences (e.g. Gemmell et al., 2002, 2004; Mann, 2004), for example, by wearing recording devices (e.g. Hodges et al., 2006; Vermuri et al., 2004). This trend focuses on the automatically created media and the technology that makes this and later database management possible. The assumption was that lifelogging would replace human memory and people would never have to forget (Sellen and Whittaker, 2010). This article focuses on the effect of newly developed products and their user experience. In addition, these new designs present personal media people already have, which they created and shared purposely. Within HCI and interaction design many augmented memory systems, as they are sometimes called, have been built that facilitate the use of these personal media, both physical and digital, as cues for reconstructing memories. Some systems focus on tagging memory objects (e.g. Stevens et al., 2003), others support related activities, such as storytelling (e.g. Bhömer et al., 2010; Golsteijn and Hoven, 2013) and remembering the deceased (e.g. Banks et al., 2012; Hoven et al., 2008; Odom et al., 2010), the creation of memory cues (e.g. Hayes et al., 2004; Meerbeek et al., 2010) or a combination of several activities (e.g. Hoven and Eggen, 2003, 2008; Nunes, et al., 2009).

Many augmented memory systems support external remembering through physical media. Often this is implemented as tangible interaction (Fitzmaurice et al., 1995; Hornecker and Buur, 2006; Hoven et al., 2013; Mazalek and Hoven, 2009; Shaer and Hornecker, 2010; Ullmer and Ishii, 2000) to link physical objects to digital information, for example, holiday souvenirs with associated digital photos (Hoven and Eggen, 2003, 2004; Nunes et al., 2009), and hence the name Materialising Memories.

Materialising Memories

As mentioned before, the Materialising Memories body of research combines physical designs with computing, facilitating the use of material and digital memory cues for creating remembering experiences in real-life situations. This design research fits the recollecting and reminiscing categories identified by Sellen and Whittaker (2010). The following two case studies, Cueb and 4Photos, focus in particular on communication in the present about the past through the use of digital photos as memory cues. It is important to note that the aim is to facilitate this communication in context, which in these case studies is in the homes of the photo owners. The aim of these case studies was not to create systems that are as efficient as possible, for example, through facilitating a direct search for individual photos, but instead to create a pleasurable experience that matches best with the everyday use of photos, which is typically focused on browsing and not searching (Sellen et al., 2012).

Case study 1: Cueb

The Cueb case study (Golsteijn and Hoven, 2012, 2013) started from the idea to improve communication between parents and teenagers in an everyday situation. A literature study (for an overview, see Golsteijn and Hoven, 2013) showed that, as expected, communication is very important, and that research so far focused on specific topics, which were mostly health related, including sexuality, tobacco, drug and alcohol use. The topics of everyday communication were less studied, with one exception (Noller and Bagi, 1985), which showed a mismatch between desired and actual communication. To investigate this topic further, a diary study (with 4 participating families resulting in 14 family members) was implemented to collect examples of everyday communication between parents and teenagers. A total of 161 reported conversations over a 2-week period were analysed using the open coding approach (for detailed information, see Golsteijn and Hoven, 2013). One of the main results confirmed the findings of Noller and Bagi (1985) in that most conversations focused on the teenager, instead of on the parents. Therefore, we decided to focus on parent-oriented communication. Since the specific topics reported in literature did not appear in our diary study, we decided to focus on a more mundane focus, one that the teenagers could relate to and were actively involved in: the past of their parents.

Brainstorming sessions resulted in many ideas, from which four were selected based on feasibility and innovation, to be developed further (see Figure 1). Three families (each consisting of 1 father, 1 mother and 1 teenager) were consulted about these concepts in order to find out which one would support communication between parents and teenagers best. The Conversation Cubes (see Figure 1(b)) seemed most promising and were developed into the final concept, which was called Cueb (see Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Four concepts were developed to support communication between parents and teenagers: (a) News Bulletin; (b) Conversation Cubes; (c) Dusty Photographs; (d) Timeline.

Figure 2.

A computer-aided design (CAD) rendering of Cueb (top left), the prototype set in its casing (top right) and the Cuebs in context (bottom).

Cueb consists of two interactive photo browse-and-display devices containing personal digital photo collections. One device is intended to be used by the parent and the other by the teenager. Interaction with the devices includes shaking, which facilitates the display of personal photos on each of the sides. In addition, one photo can be selected by pressing it, which in turn will serve as a filter in the next shaking action. Someone can interact with one device autonomously, or with two devices simultaneously. The latter requires the two cubes to be held against each other, which would allow for an exchange for photos between the two devices.

This functionality was implemented in a working prototype (see http://cueb.conniegolsteijn.com/ for a movie) in order to execute a quantitative and qualitative user evaluation. The evaluation involved four families totalling 13 individuals, and in order to reduce the novelty effect (Lippert, 2003) to have an influence on the results, we implemented a comparative evaluation. This meant that the designed prototypes were used twice, once with limited and once with full functionality. The evaluation included questionnaires, interviews and observations, which focused on the differences between the interactions and the participants’ experiences. With limited functionality, we aimed at providing the functionality that physical photographs would have, that is, the browsing and showing of photos, but not the selecting and filtering. Cueb with full functionality showed a significant effect for cueing memories and facilitating storytelling (z = −2.296, p < .05, r = −.25), and therefore, it was believed to have a more positive effect on family relations than Cueb with limited functionality. The qualitative results confirmed participants’ enthusiasm about Cueb; in general, they liked the randomness factor in the selection of photos displayed, the intimate atmosphere that the relatively small display devices created and the involvement of both parties in the activity.

Case study 2: 4Photos

The 4Photos case study (Bhömer et al., 2010; O’Hara et al., 2012) did not focus on a specific target group, like Cueb, but instead focused on a particular context of use: dinner time. Sharing a meal with others is a significant social event, during which memories of experiences are often shared. No designated memory system had been designed to support this activity at the dinner table, resulting in design opportunities.

Similar to the Cueb case study a number of ideas were generated, which resulted in four concepts (see Figure 3). These concepts helped in refining the initial design goal (or brief), because the following topics turned out to be important: nonobtrusiveness, democratic control and participation, easy access to new content, random but related presentation of media. Based on these insights, the centrepiece concept was selected to be developed further into the 4Photos prototype (see Figure 4 for the first design iteration and Figure 5 for the second design iteration). 4Photos has to be placed in the middle of the table, much in the same way as a candelabra or a vase with flowers can be used as a table centrepiece. The interactive device can display digital photos on all four sides; these personal photos are downloaded from the dinner guests’ Facebook accounts.

Figure 3.

Four concepts were developed to support communication at the dinner table (from left to right): the enchanted dinner set; the photo annotator; the photo-robo; and the photo centrepiece.

Figure 4.

A CAD rendering of 4Photos-design iteration 1 (left), and the prototype (right).

Figure 5.

A computer-aided design (CAD) rendering of 4Photos-design iteration 2 (top left), the prototype in context (top right) and a close up of the working prototype (bottom).

The first 4Photos-design iteration was used to investigate different ways of presenting digital photos, comparing random photos and a moving photo strip of one person’s photo collection. During informal user evaluations, the moving photo strip turned out to be more suitable to support conversations than random photos because the photos in one strip would be related to the same person who would then have the time to tell a story related to the photos.

Interaction with 4Photos can take place in two ways: browsing through the photos can be done by rotating the head of the device and selecting one particular photo (thus stopping the flow of photos passing by) and zooming in on it, which is done by holding a hand close to the device (in front of the infrared distance sensors).

The final 4Photos concept (as can be seen in Figure 5) was evaluated during five social gatherings (O’Hara et al., 2012), which were video-recorded and analysed. This analysis showed that 4Photos indeed facilitated dinner talk. It helped people to get to know one another through emerging conversations, and it facilitated shared reminiscing. Also, displays of affection were seen, which seemed to reinforce family ties (one purpose of sharing a meal). 4Photos allowed for contrasting notions of self-identity to become part of the conversation in a fluent manner. In addition, it became clear that the device allowed for all dinner guests to participate in the conversations and interact with the device. However, the choice of Facebook as the digital photo source was not always a success. Facebook was selected because it allows for easy selection of media by the participants, given that the device would not be used if uploading media would be too complicated or cumbersome. It turned out the content of the Facebook photos was not always appropriate for some of the dinner settings, in particular when children were present.

Summarising, both Cueb and 4Photos are new interactive designs that facilitate communication about the past in real-life situations through the use of digital photos. These case studies embody Materialising Memories.

Discussion

These case studies, and the Materialising Memories body of research in general, generate more questions than they answer. Several of the recurring themes and questions will be discussed below.

Everything is about remembering

One core issue that keeps recurring concerns remembering. How do we know whether people actually remember something? The Materialising Memories work focuses on real-life situations, evaluating in context and making the remembering experience as pleasant as can be, which means we try to reduce our interference as much as possible. In addition, we are not interested in validity (see also Hoven and Eggen, 2009) and do not want to check the content of what people say.

Can we assume that when people say ‘I remember…’ that they actually talk about a memory? Does the same hold for storytelling: when people are sharing past experiences can we assume they are remembering?

In addition, when looking at the functions of remembering, including shaping a personal identity, forming opinions, regulating moods and making friends (Cohen, 1996), it becomes clear that these are interwoven in everyday life in many intricate ways. Does that imply that memory influences everything we do, even when we are not aware of it? Then how can we measure the effect of augmented memory systems on our memory?

A related question is about definitions since the field is not yet completely understood and the term remembering experiences is not properly defined yet. The same holds for the term memory cue because it is not yet possible to exactly pinpoint what it is and how it works (both internal and external memory cues).

The effect of cues

It is difficult to predict what will be a cue for someone, how, when and why it will work. Although you can ask people to create their own memory cues, such as in the time-capsule study (Petrelli et al., 2009), this is rare in memory research.

External memory cues are elements of the retrieval context, but used to reinstate some of the original settings, or the context during encoding. Experience shows us that, in particular, photos are more popular to use as external memory cues than other media types such as videos, smells and music. Photos, such as Cueb and 4Photos, seem appropriate for communication purposes, including eliciting stories about the past. Presumably photos are popular, because they leave room for imagination, interpretation and flexibility in the selection of what story to tell and how. Since music and often also video include sound, they seem less suitable for storytelling activities. Video also seems less flexible in that it often already has a narrative, in any case a sequential presentation of information, which leaves less to the imagination or interpretation. Mementos (physical artifacts) are also flexible in use in terms of communicating memories, but are often fixed to a certain location, for example, the home, while we carry our photos with us on our laptops, tablets and mobile phones. However, when people want to share more precise details or information of recent events instead, video might be the more suitable media type, like in Bhömer and Hoven (2013).

A prior study (Hoven and Eggen, 2009) focusing on the recall of a new event in a living room situation showed that text generated more memory details than text combined with a photo, video clip, souvenir, smell or sound. In retrospect, we believe that the open question (the text-condition) left the answer more open to participants, than the media provided in combination with the text. We assume the media made the participants focus on what they perceived in the media, which took their mind off the question and things they could remember outside of what the media presented to them.

Designing interactive systems is often more successful when a specific purpose or use has been identified and selected, different media types often have their own archives and technology needed to support several media types at once is hard to integrate into interactive products. This means that often only one type of media is selected to be supported in an interactive product. On the other hand, to create the best remembering experience a combination of cues and media might be the way to go.

Conclusion and future challenges

This article presented the Materialising Memories body of research through two case studies: Cueb and 4Photos. Both case studies aimed to support communication about people’s personal past through dedicated interactive devices displaying digital photos, combining internal and external remembering. The aim of the article was to show the opportunities that arise when psychology and design meet, in particular when focusing on external remembering. Design research can be used as a tool and process to study and support people in everyday life through the creation of interventions and technologies in the shape of memory cues and cueing devices. The current state of the art of augmented memory systems focuses on the qualitative description of the resulting remembering experiences and has many open questions to explore. The collaboration between the fields of psychology and design is needed to eventually quantify the impact of these designs using people’s personally created media on the remembering experience.

The overlap of these fields, which is still rather unexplored territory, opens up many opportunities for future work from the memory perspective and the design perspective. Future challenges result from the choice and focus of any one or a combination of the following variables: different memory types (e.g. autobiographical memory, prospective memory); different remembering activities (e.g. reflection and problem-solving, see also Sellen and Whittaker, 2010); different groups of people (e.g. with and without memory problems); different contexts or situations (e.g. locations, social settings, during other activities); different memory effects, indicators and measurements; implicit or explicit remembering; active or passive remembering; short-term or long-term remembering and its effects over time.

Currently, digital photos are often used as memory cues because they are easy to create, but new not-yet-existing media will open up the design space even further. Ongoing design explorations with media and media devices will result in new and unexpected remembering experiences in the future. Materialising Memories has shown examples of what kind of case studies can be built and used in everyday life. The next step is to team up with other disciplines to measure the impact of these case studies on cognitive processes and distributed cognition.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my wonderful (former) students Connie Golsteijn and Martijn ten Bhömer for their creativity and dedication in realising Cueb and 4Photos: two great personal memory cues. Thanks to Martijn’s co-supervisor John Helmes and Microsoft Research Cambridge for their support. In addition, I thank all the people who have helped me shape my thoughts and ideas over the years, in particular Berry Eggen: I could not have written this article without your never-ending support and enthusiasm. Thanks also to David Frohlich, Daniela Petrelli, Steve Whittaker, Corina Sas, Jettie Hoonhout, Ineke Wessel and the Phenom team: Evert van Loenen, Nicolas de Jong, Esko Dijk, Yuechen Qian, Dario Teixeira, Emile Aarts, Doug Tedd, Matthias Rauterberg and Armin Kohlrausch.

Funding

This research was supported by STW VIDI grant number 016.128.303 of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), awarded to Elise van den Hoven.

Notes

Author biography

Elise van den Hoven is Associate Professor in the School of Design, Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building, University of Technology, Sydney, and in the Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology. Elise has a background in human–computer interaction (HCI) and studies how interactive products can support human remembering in everyday life.

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