Full list of papers and abstracts

Bridging Practices, Theories, and Technologies to Support Reminiscence (W19)

Title Authors Abstract
'Story of my life?' The contents and functions of reminiscing Arlene J. Astell, Barbara Purves, Alison Phinney
In this paper we address three interconnected issues arising from the question: "how to support reminiscing?" The first issue examines why people reminisce, looking at the functions it serves both for the individual and the social group. The second issue relates to the types of stories people recollect and share, which may sometimes be difficult or distressing events in their lives and how to deal with these. This connects to the third issue examining the process of choosing materials such as photographs and artifacts to stimulate people to recollect and recount their personal stories. Our contributions to the workshop will be of interest to a wide range of researchers engaged in developing reminiscence systems, broadly defined, as we (i) draw on our experience with groups of younger and older adults from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds to address these three issues and (ii) offer suggestions arising from this work for how to deal with them
"Making Memories": A Mobile Application to Support Memory Making and Reminiscence Behzod Sirjani, Katie Derthick
Humans naturally prescribe meaning to objects and experiences throughout their life, yet there are no convenient ways to tag and reminisce about these experiences as they are happening. Our paper outlines the design for "Making Memories", a mobile phone application that supports both memory making and reminiscence in order to help people live healthy and happier lives.
Improving quality of life, behavior and function in individuals with dementia through technology-assisted reminiscence Chantal Kerssens, Jason P. Zamer
In this paper we make the case that demographic trends emphasize a need for assistive technology supporting seniors with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia disorders (ADRD). Support is specifically needed to alleviate everyday behavioral symptoms associated with ADRD. A reminiscence-based technology solution is then introduced.
Let me tell you a story: A model of conversation for people with dementia Deborah I. Fels, Arlene J. Astell
Storytelling is an important method of communication at all stages of life. Sharing narratives about lived events and experiences provides topics of conversation and opportunities for connecting with other people. In this paper we apply a conventional model of storytelling to the verbal reminiscences of older people with a dementia diagnosis. Their stories retain the conventional structure, suggesting that storytelling, which is an enjoyable and engaging social activity, can provide a conversation model for people with dementia.
Reminiscing through location-based asynchronous video communication Frank Bentley, Santosh Basapur, Sujoy Kumar Chowdhury
Reminiscing is an activity usually performed face to face. However, with friends and families moving apart, it is becoming important to maintain rich relationships at a distance. This includes the relationship building and group identity strengthening activity of reminiscing. To this end, we have created the Serendipitous Family Stories system, a web and mobile system that allows people to create video stories for others and save them at a place in the world to be discovered on their mobile phones. In a 20-participant field study of this system, we observed increased communication about family history over a distance and outcomes that demonstrated the strengthening of family relationships.
CogStim Game to Prevent Age-Related Cognitive Impairment Hyungsin Kim, Viraj Sapre, Ellen Yi-Luen Do
In this paper, we present our ongoing research on developing a game grounded on evidence-based psychosocial intervention with cognitive stimulation. With a growing aging population, older adults want to actively preserve their memory in various ways. Based on brain plasticity and person-centered theories, we propose the CogStim game to help older adults exercise their memories, as well as monitor their cognitive functions through game play.
Space Copy & Paste: Grabbing Space-Based User Experience to Support Reminiscence Ohbyung Kwon, Jae Mun Sim, Nam Yeon Lee, Keunho Choi, Kyoung-Yun Kim, Min Yong Kim
One of the visions of well-being life care is to provide the users with an experience to support reminiscence, whenever, wherever they want in an unobtrusive manner. However, legacy pervasive systems seldom consider this full experience. In this paper we propose a novel pervasive reminiscence method that grabs, saves, and retrieves an individual experience in a pervasive manner. Since the method is inspired by copy & paste functions in presentation software tools, our prototype is called Space Copy & Paste--consisting of two methods (i.e., space copy and space paste). To show the feasibility of the pervasive shopping with space copy & paste service, we performed an experiment to validate the proposed method.
Beyond reminiscing: Looking back to look forward in dementia Jayne Wallace, John McCarthy, Peter Wright, Patrick Olivier
Improved treatment and early diagnosis of dementia facilitates people to be their own vocal advocates in life in general and in research on dementia. Our position is that by involving someone with dementia deeply within a design process they can articulate their sense of self in relation to their biography, their relationships with other people, and also to the profound context of living with dementia. Through an empathic and creative engagement between researchers/designers and participants a co-creative practice can open the space for someone living with dementia to revive memories and aspects of self and to turn reminiscence into something very future focused. By drawing on the notion of personhood, where self is viewed as something relational rather than individualistic, we developed a design inquiry with Gillian who is living with early stage dementia and involve her friends and family (predominantly her husband John) in the design and making of a series of digital jewelry pieces to support her memories, sense of self and relationships with others. By Gillian and John's own hands reminiscence became a seamless transition into legacy and a new design space has been opened up to us by their relational approach to experience and personhood.
Mapping the Future of Reminiscence: A Conceptual Guide for Research and Practice Jeffrey Dean Webster, Ernst T. Bohlmeijer, Gerben J. Westerhof
Nearly 50 years after Butler’s seminal 1963 contribution, the field of reminiscence and life review is entering a more mature stage. Isolated examples of increasingly sophisticated studies have recently emerged that can serve as a sound, cumulative data base. However, the field lacks an overarching conceptual model describing emerging trends, neglected domains, and key linkages among component parts. In the present article, the authors selectively, yet critically, review prior limitations and promising developments and then describe a comprehensive, multifaceted conceptual model that can guide future research and practice. The authors initially situate their model within a particular theoretical orientation (i.e., life-span psychology). They then describe a heuristic model that identifies and discusses triggers, modes, contexts, moderators, functions, and outcomes. Finally, the authors illustrate how these interactive factors influence both theoretical and applied areas.
Reminiscence as Performance Jocelyn Spence, David M. Frohlich
Ethnographic investigations of the uses of digital photography in the home have revealed a number of insights into the practice of reminiscence. These findings illuminate key differences between reminiscence and other forms of interaction with digital media, and between reminiscence and storytelling. These differences suggest a new approach to supporting reminiscence as an interactive performance.
Using Online Calendaring Systems to Support Reminiscence Katie Derthick, Alex Thayer, Matthew J. Bietz, Charlotte P. Lee
Our research with users of an online calendaring system (OCS), Google calendar, indicates potential for OCSs to support personal and shared reminiscence. Participants use their calendars to maintain an accurate record of personal events to which they refer for personal reminiscence. Participants also use information in the calendars of others with whom they share calendars for awareness and to prompt shared reminiscence with one another. Future research in technology-supported reminiscence should consider OCSs as relevant technologies and calendar entries as useful prompts.
An evaluation of computers for reminiscing Maurice Mulvenna, Laura Doyle, Suzanne Martin, Terence Wright, Huiri Zheng
This paper presents a case study on card-based versus device-based (Apple iPad) reminiscing using photographic images. Nineteen older people participated in this study and results show that there is no significant difference between traditional and device based reminiscing of photographic images. The authors' position on reminiscing focuses primarily on helping to understand people's current practices around reminiscing, supported by empirical studies and theories of memory that might inform technology designs.
Motivating Lifelogging Practices through Shared Family Reminiscence Niamh Caprani, Noel E. O’Connor, Cathal Gurrin
Developments in technology have meant that people can record and store vast quantities of personal information, termed "lifelogs". Lifelogs provide a glimpse of a person's life at a particular time and can range from collections of photographs to bank statements. Researchers are now finding that these personal records may be a valuable source to support memory and reminiscence in older adults. It is our conjecture that older adults would benefit most from lifelog collections if the practice of lifelogging and lifelog devices is introduced when the individual is high-functioning, thus increasing the possibility of acceptance and allowing time for a significant lifelog to be collected. Our research will explore the motivations for lifelogging. In particular, we will investigate whether shared family reminiscence is a motivation for lifelogging in both younger and older adults.
Reminiscing a person's life from his lifelong todo list Nicolas Kokkalis, Scott Klemmer, Mendel Rosenblum
To-do lists and project management software require their users to manually keep the lists current and relevant. These to-do lists can grow unwieldy and also contain tasks that should be archived. Because users loath to do information gardening, they fall back to pen and paper, email, or flat text files. Privileged users have Executive Assistants to organize their tasks but not everyone can afford this premium solution. This work seeks to create an intelligent task list that can be used for the entire lifetime of a user. Having a life long todo list is not only a great way to reminisce one's life but also it gives the structure to zoom in and out to important moments of it.
Supporting Forgetting and Semantic Enrichment of e-Memories through Annotation Reza Rawassizadeh, Elaheh Momeni, Katarzyna Wac, Martin Tomitsch, A Min Tjoa
The metaphor of life-logging (personal e-memory) promises a complimentary assistance to the biological human memory. However life-log information, which is collected from raw context sensors data, is weakly coupled with real life events. Further forgetting, an inherent feature of human memory, is not supported in life-logs. To address these limitations of life-logs we propose two novel approaches, which are: (I) supporting digital forgetting, and (II) facilitating reminiscence from users' e-memories through semantic enrichment. Forgetting is achieved based on the information expiration timestamp and personal preferences. Reminiscence is achieved by annotating life-log information with meaningful human readable tags and based on its social access-scope.
Cultivating Heritage: the role of reflection in keeping history alive Sarah M. Reeder
Through the sharing of life stories, what is reminiscence for one becomes the heritage of another. In western cultures, people over the age of 80 must often face loneliness and isolation as they become necessarily homebound and rely on relatives for care, emotional as well as physical. Due to the physical limitations of old age, elders are often viewed as societal burdens, no longer contributing to the greater good. But they have lived long lives, and have much still to contribute in the way of experience, and wisdom. Storytelling is one way the younger generations might gain access to this knowledge, learn to appreciate their elders, and elders can continue to contribute to the greater good.
Passing on Memories in Later Life Siân Lindley
Findings from home interviews with older adults who consider themselves to be 'recording their memories for posterity' are presented. Two practices are described: the archiving and preservation of existing family content, and the creation of new artefacts as a way of recording one's own memories. Findings that are highlighted include recipient design when recording stories, memory as an authentic resource for the past, and the frustration of wishing to pass on one's stories but feeling that there is a lack of opportunity to do so. In the context of the workshop, these could provide an interesting contrast to studies of specific technologies for reminiscing, and reminiscing practices associated with younger cohorts.
How to film a memory: reminiscence and visual media Terence Wright, Maurice Mulvenna, Suzanne Martin, Huiri Zheng
Film and video have become important means of providing a visual record of reminiscence activity. Stemming from a small research project using iPads to support reminiscence work, during which video footage was shot, the paper questions whether the camera can be simply adopted as a note-taking device or is there a greater potential to be explored in our use of audiovisual media that can expand our knowledge of how people reminisce?

High level workshop goals and plan

Below is the text of the original proposal/call.

Introduction

This one-day workshop explores how HCI-related practice and research can understand and support reminiscence. A growing group of practitioners and researchers, both inside and outside the CHI community, is doing design and empirical work around reminiscence. Examples of technologies built include Stevens et al.'s Living Memory Box [15], tabletop photo sharing tools [1], lifelogging technologies such as SenseCam [13], and tools such as CaraClock [16], FM Radio [11], and Pensieve [8] that leverage archives of pictures, audio recordings, and social media content. Studies of practice include Petrelli et al.'s examination of mementos [9] and capture of future memories [10], Rodden and Wood's studies of the management of digital photographs [12], and Wu et al.'s study of families with members with memory impairments [18].

This interest reflects the importance of reminiscing in daily life. Psychology and anthropology work has shown that the function and process of reminiscing are complicated, valuable, and social (e.g., [2][3][5][17]), marking this as an important and interesting topic for HCI to study. Further, some of the psychological purposes of reminiscence are around self-knowledge, reflection, and problem-solving, suggesting connections to recent work that merges technical and theoretical views on personal informatics [7], lifelogging [14], and interpretation of biometric data [6].

Goals

This workshop's goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from all of these communities to explore potential relationships between technology and reminiscence. We hope to have participants with a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds, to encourage discussion and interaction rather than presentation, to look at a variety of issues around the intersection of technology and reminiscence, and to form new collaborations including grant proposals and an edited book proposal that grow out of the interactions at the workshop. Another goal is to increase the visibility of reminiscence as an important topic in North America to complement the work in Europe over the last several years. Finally, we hope to increase international collaborations, including grant proposals aimed at NSF programs that target international teams.

Tentative themes

Ultimately, the themes of the workshop will be determined by its participants, but based on our goal of fostering interdisciplinary discussions of the topic and an examination of the literature so far, we anticipate several likely themes, briefly outlined below.

Understanding people's current practices around reminiscing. Knowing the context of the activity to be designed for is important in design generally, and may be especially important in personal, emotional domains such as reminiscence. The workshop will provide a venue for researchers to present key insights from their studies of reminiscence behaviors.

Using empirical studies and theories of memory to inform technology designs. What can literature from social science disciplines say about the roles and risks of introducing technologies to support reminiscence? The workshop will identify a core set of studies and theories that are likely to inform the discussion of bringing technology and reminiscence together.

Presenting, critiquing, and evaluating existing technologies for reminiscence. One goal of the workshop is to look at the current universe of technologies that support reminiscence with an eye toward what works, and what is likely to work. This includes both empirical evaluation of existing technologies deployed in the world, and analytical evaluation of existing and proposed technologies using the practices and theories described above.

Exploring ways that technology might support new practices around reminiscing. Technologies such as SenseCam provide new ways of experiencing and remembering the past, while people create memory-laden content in social media that technologies might be able to leverage. Exploring new possibilities that technologies offer for reminiscing will be an important goal of the workshop. Both specific designs and analysis of current technologies will be valued.

Supporting social aspects of reminiscence. Reminiscence often has a distinctly social character, being used to connect to other people and keep one's own relationships strong. Many designs will need to take these social aspects into account. In particular, we are interested in designs that might integrate with existing communication and social technologies.

Pre-Workshop Activities

The goal of the pre-workshop activities is to ensure the workshop itself flows smoothly, primarily by encouraging participants to become familiar with each others' work and backgrounds in advance. Thus, on the workshop website, we will post links to participants' websites and position papers. We will probably use a wiki-based site to encourage lightweight commenting on the papers before the workshop. We will also use these papers, with input from participants, to form small groups around the themes that emerge, and to engage these groups in planning activities for 1-hour sessions focused on these themes. There's a limit to how much preparation we can reasonably expect people to undertake, but we will provide opportunities for people keen to be involved to help shape the topical and activity structure of the workshop.

Workshop Activities

Our main goal during the workshop is to maximize discussion and interaction, which suggests a combination of panels, small group discussions, and other activities, with minimal formal presentation. The exact composition of the groups and activities will depend on the interests of the participants. Latter parts of the workshop will be explicitly structured around fostering collaboration around specific research activities, grant proposals, and proposals for an edited volume that will reflect participants' views on what is known, what is disputed, and what should be studied next in the areas. We will produce materials for the CHI spotlight on workshops and for the workshop website that reflect these outcomes.

Acknowledgements

Funding for the workshop is provided by the Cornell Institute for Social Science and UK HEIF/University of Ulster Research Impact Award 2010.

References

[1] Apted, T., Kay, J., and Quigley, A. 2006. Tabletop sharing of digital photographs for the elderly. In Proc. CHI 2006, 781-790.

[2] Bryant, F., Smart, C., and King, S. 2005. Using the past to enhance the present: Boosting happiness through positive reminiscence. J. Happiness Studies, 6:227-260.

[3] Conway, M. A. and Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. 2000. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychol. Rev., 107(2):261-288.

[4] Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., and Mariani, J. 2004. Collaborating around collections: informing the continued development of photoware. In Proc. CSCW 2004, 396-405.

[5] Kuhn, A. 2002. Family secrets: acts of memory and imagination. Verso.

[6] Leahu, L., Schwenk, S., and Sengers, P. 2008. Subjective objectivity: negotiating emotional meaning. In Proc. DIS 2008, 425-434.

[7] Li, I., Dey, A., and Forlizzi, J. 2010. A stage-based model of personal informatics systems. In Proc. CHI 2010, 557-566.

[8] Peesapati, S. T., et al. 2010. Pensieve: Supporting Everyday Reminiscence. In Proc. CHI 2010.

[9] Petrelli, D., Whittaker, S., and Brockmeier, J. 2008. AutoTopography: what can physical mementos tell us about digital memories? In Proc. CHI 2008, 53-62.

[10] Petrelli, D., van den Hoven, E., and Whittaker, S. 2009. Making history: intentional capture of future memories. In Proc. CHI 2009, 1723-1732.

[11] Petrelli, D., Villar, N., Kalnikaite, V., Dib, L., and Whittaker, S. 2010. FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos. In Proc. CHI 2010. 2371-2380.

[12] Rodden, K. and Wood, K. R. 2003. How do people manage their digital photographs?. In Proc. CHI 2003.

[13] Sellen, A. J., et al. 2007. Do life-logging technologies support memory for the past?: an experimental study using sensecam. In Proc. CHI 2007.

[14] Sellen, A. J. and Whittaker, S. 2010. Beyond total capture: a constructive critique of lifelogging. Commun. ACM 53(5): 70-77.

[15] Stevens, M. M., Abowd, G. D., Truong, K. N., and Vollmer, F. 2003. Getting into the Living Memory Box: Family archives & holistic design. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(3): 210-216.

[16] Uriu, D., Shiratori, N., Hashimoto, S., Ishibashi, S., and Okude, N. 2009. CaraClock: an interactive photo viewer designed for family memories. In Proc. CHI 2009 Ext. Abst., 3205-3210.

[17] Webster, J. D., and McCall, M. E. 1999. Reminiscence functions across adulthood: A replication and extension. J. Adult Dev., 6(1):73-85.

[18] Wu, M., Birnholtz, J., Richards, B., Baecker, R., and Massimi, M. 2008. Collaborating to remember: a distributed cognition account of families coping with memory impairments. In Proc. CHI 2008, 825-83.