Designing Social Memory Artifacts in a Smart Home

Abstract

Memory is shaped by the media in which it is communicated (van Dijck, 2007). In a world where people live enmeshed with computing technologies, there are myriad opportunities to enrich and enhance everyday life with new kinds of memory. In my dissertation research, I employ a mixed methods interpretivist approach to investigate how people relate to and revisit memories of their past, how families collectively interact with shared memory, and how pervasive "ubicomp" technologies can be designed to support and enhance the social activities of sharing family memory across generations.