PhotoFlow in Action: Picture-Mediated Reminiscence Supporting Family Socio-Connectivity

Family connections are maintained through sharing reminiscences, often supported by family photographs which easily prompt memories. This is increasingly important as we age, as picture-based reminiscence has been shown to reduce older adults' social isolation. However, there is a gap between sharing memories from physical pictures and the limited support for oral social reminiscence afforded by digital tools. PhotoFlow supports older adults' picture-mediated social storytelling of family memories using an intuitive metaphor mirroring sharing physical family pictures on a table top. The app uses the speech of oral storytelling to automatically organize pictures based only on what has been said. This simplifies the overall process of family picture interactions by leveraging one enjoyable aspect to ease a more effortful one. In particular, the familiar table top interaction metaphor has the potential to bridge the gap between physical picture reminiscence and managing digital picture collections.