Life History Support System “LHS” - Recording Memories and Sharing Stories for Family Social Network

Abstract

The world is aging rapidly, and the population of over 65 years old in Japan is 29.1% (Sep. 15, 2022, Japan Statistic Bureau of Japan), which is the highest in Japanese history. Human memory and knowledge are rapidly being digitized on an incalculable scale. While its value as a booster for monetization is now known worldwide, such private and personal heritage, especially its whereabouts remains unknown. In particular, the memory and knowledge of elders are not recorded appropriately for the next generations, we claim that the current system has shown an enormous loss of value in society, especially for the family members. Therefore, the desire to interview and document the life experiences of different generations of family members is very important. However, interviewing and documenting are difficult to achieve for various reasons, in such cases as when family members live apart from each other. Therefore, our research group has started to develop Life History Support System called “LHS”. The new system aims to solve the problem and preserve elderlies' wisdom and knowledge cultivated in turbulent times, such as during WW II and the post-war years of recovery. The LHS is designed for the Family Social Network, allowing digital information to be accessed only by the same members. LHS is an application that runs on smartphones, tablets and PC which is connected to the Internet and works as a social network system (SNS), but the main difference between conventional SNS is (1) LHS can be accessed only by the family members or designated members, (2) it mainly works as a card type database to share topic cards among members. We have developed a prototype system using Apple’s Claris FileMaker database system which runs on-premises private server. Then, to test the prototype's applicability, we have performed a preliminary interview experiment in an actual user environment (family members living together or living apart, and the elderly person living alone). The result shows that we could identified the experience of “fun” by both, an interviewer and interviewee, during the process of recall of memories with the LHS setup. Rather, we confirm the needs in longitudinal study to capture the continuous use of the LHS. Since the LHS inherently gains its value by long-term regular use, interviewing, recording and viewing by many family members, it is necessary to add new functions based on some theories. We are planning to include gamification functions to LHS. This paper describes the LHS system overview and the current development status.