TY - CONF T1 - "If These Walls Could Talk": Designing with Memories of Places T2 - Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Y1 - 2014 A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman KW - activity traces KW - family memory KW - memory KW - memory artifacts KW - pervasive environments KW - ubicomp environments AB -

This work explores the potential value of using the enormous amount of activity traces latest ubicomp environments have started to capture. We sought to understand potential practices of using these traces in the long term through a field-based study in the USA that examines how today's people use traces left by their predecessors in the houses where they live.

We found that our participants received, discovered, and made use of many small traces held by artifacts, people, and building materials. Those traces were used to provide practical assistance to participants' appropriation of their houses as well as to connect participants with the past in an evocative manner. Our analysis highlights the roles played by the social context and the mutability of the house in the experience of remembering the house as well as in shaping participants' attitudes of passing on traces of prior appropriation of the place. To illustrate the design implications of those findings, we offer three design concepts to characterize potential ways of using traces captured by ubicomp environments in the long term.

JF - Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems PB - ACM CY - New York, NY, USA SN - 978-1-4503-2902-6 UR - Complete-NoFile ER - TY - Generic T1 - Family Memory in a Taiwanese Context T2 - CHI’12 Workshop on "Heritage Matters: Designing for Current and Future Values Through Digital and Social Technologies" Y1 - 2012 A1 - Ying-yu Chen A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - memory KW - memory artifacts AB -

In this paper, we explore how Taiwanese practices of family memory and memory artifacts show significant differences from those in the US, suggesting important memory practices are cultural and collective. For example, Taiwanese do not keep pictures of deceased ancestors in the same way as Americans might, they do not have family heirlooms, nor do they keep extensive childhood memorabilia. We studied this through 20 interviews and household inventories conducted in Taiwan.

JF - CHI’12 Workshop on "Heritage Matters: Designing for Current and Future Values Through Digital and Social Technologies" UR - Complete ER -