A First-Hand Study of Technology that Supports Relationships

Blog Daniel

My PhD research is focussed on Digital Separations – looking at what happens when a couple come to the end of a relationship with regards to their digital memory cues, and how technology can be used to support the individuals.

Although I am primarily based at the University of Dundee in (chilly) Scotland, I have had the good fortune to also enrol at UTS and become part of the Materialising Memories programme, spending time in (the much sunnier) Sydney. While preparing to spend time at UTS earlier this year I stumbled across an ironic problem – though I was investigating how technology can support people ending relationships, I needed to find technology to help me maintain my relationship with my partner while we were halfway around the world from one another.

Suddenly I had a vested interest in how technology could support people staying together.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to realise that the ways in which Shauna and I stay in contact during a typical day might fall short across nine and a half thousand miles, an 11 hour time difference and a reversal of seasons. Writing an email about what I’m up to, or receiving texts from Shauna about the project she’s working on would keep us up to date on each other’s lives, but we would want more than just various updates scattered across apps.

We decided that we wanted to communicate with one another using a variety of media within one channel to give each other a fuller picture of our time apart; this is what led us to Couple.

Couple is an app that’s billed as “An Intimate Place For Two”; upon creating an account you choose a partner to communicate with through the app. You can only have one partner linked to your account, creating a private space on your device that is separate from all other communications.

While in Sydney, everything Shauna and I sent to one another through Couple was stored in a timeline – text, images and video were all displayed in chronological order in one place. We shared voice recordings, location updates, and sketches with one another, as well as a handy pre-set “thinking of you” illustrated message.

One of my favourite features of the app was the Thumb Kiss. Both users press their thumbs to the same point on their respective screens and once the thumbs have been held in place for a few seconds, the screens glow red and the devices vibrate, mimicking physical contact. It’s beyond cheesy, but also kinda cute, and a strangely tangible way of connecting across a digital medium. It’s one of the few features that required both me and Shauna to be actively using the app at the same time, creating an intimate little interaction.

When Shauna joined me in Sydney for the last two weeks of my trip we continued using Couple to document our time together in Australia. Once we returned to Scotland, we came to realise that our Couple Timeline, which once acted as a very successful communication medium, had taken on a different role. It now acts as a diary of our adventures in Australia together, my first experiences of being at UTS and Shauna’s time as a single parent to our dog. The timeline contains cue after cue for memories of our time apart and together in Oz, and has ended up becoming a powerful tool for reminiscing.

In the end, creating digital memory cues and sharing them with Shauna helped us maintain our relationship during my time in Sydney. I gained valuable first hand experience in just how important digital memory cues can be to a relationship, and I can now more realistically imagine how difficult it must be having to confront them when a relationship comes to an end.

CHI 2015 paper video preview

Blog Doménique, Presentations

Ahead of the 2015 CHI conference in Seoul, Korea (coming up later this month), I made a short video preview to go along with a 10 page paper titled ‘Things That Make Us Reminisce: Everyday Memory Cues as Opportunities for Interaction Design.’ It’s only 30 seconds and can be seen below.

Behind the scenes

It takes a surprisingly long time to make a short video like this. It took me about a full working day, including the editing, adding overlays, and exporting the final result. So here’s a bit on the making of, including tens of cast members, hundreds of extras, and a couple of undisciplined dragons.

Just kidding.

First up, the setting. I wanted a home-like environment for the video, with enough light to get a good image, plus an environment that would be quiet enough to get a decent audio recording. Eventually I settled on using my own studio apartment as I would have everything on hand there. The clear downside is of course having to use my bed and empty wall as the enigmatic backdrop for my narration. Rather than doing just a voice over I decided to show myself, tell why the paper is relevant, and show a bit of our method. As such, the video is more of a teaser from an information point of view.

I faced a few challenges in getting my video recorded. With only myself on deck (all the others ended up hunting loose dragons), how to hold my camera phone steady? I have another still camera that mounts to my tripod, so I opted to tie my phone to the bigger camera with elastic cord. A voice recorder was placed on my office chair just outside camera view, with a notepad acting as my cue sheet. I couldn’t actually read my script this way, so it took quite a few takes to get it right (I would make a bad actor). The desire to wear decent clothes while the room temperature reflected the heat and humidity of an Australian Summer didn’t help things either. I had to take a few breaks to cool down, and yes, it does explain my expression during the first second or two.

Camera with phone strapped on
I felt sad for the old camera, as it was merely used as a surface for my phone to be strapped onto. With some elastic rope.

The method section was filmed in our MM lab,  with the diaries and other snippets and pieces from the analysis spread out along a table. I stood behind the camera, did the diary browsing, and then panned the camera to get the other items recorded. Later, in editing the footage was sped up. The rest of the footage was cut to fit only the most important bits within the limit of thirty seconds. Finally, I added the text overlays and a blur and vignetting effect to move the focus away from the somewhat lacklustre setting.

Looking back, there are a few things I’d like to improve about my little video. The location isn’t great, and I feel I could get more information into the thirty seconds. Perhaps I could have shot a couple of things that made people reminisce for an introduction, and only briefly show how we got there with our diaries. It seems I need to get another paper accepted to put these ideas to the test!

The actual paper presentation will be during a session titled ‘Digital Collections, Practice & Legacy’ on Thursday, 23 April, starting at 9:30 in Room E1/E2. If you happen to be at CHI 2015, come and have a look.

UTS and Dundee begin joint degree program

Publications

Recently, the Materialising Memories team at UTS in Sydney welcomed several new members. Among them is Daniel Herron who’s the first joint doctoral degree candidate between UTS and Dundee University. Normally residing in Scotland, he is supervised by Wendy Moncur and Elise van den Hoven. UTS International put a short article online to mark the start of this new program and reflect on Wendy’s visit to our lab half a year ago. It also hints at new collaborative projects in the pipeline titled “Diaspora” and “Designing Hybrid Keepsakes,” as well as liaisons with other academics within UTS and Dundee.

Daniel has just finished his five week visit to UTS and might give us a blog post about that soon. If not, he’s bound to return to Sydney some time in the future.

First RR meeting in MM Lab

Snapshot from the back of the room towards presenter.
Snapshot from the back of the room towards Jan Zekveld, our first presenter.

This Wednesday we kicked off our semi-regular Reúnion de Recherche meetings in the MM lab. Jan Zekveld, a visiting student from Eindhoven University, gave an introduction to his work before an audience of eleven. He will stay in Sydney until June to work on his final Master project, which concerns the design of a peripheral reminder in an office environment. With several new members starting and some visitors present, our lab was quite a busy place. These meetings are intended to bring together the team and others to foster discussion and awareness of each other’s interests and progress.

Gail Kenning joins MM as part of her TU/e Fellowship

Project memories

gkenningEarly next year, Dr Gail Kenning, Research Associate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) of UTS, will visit Eindhoven. She will be hosted by Dr Panos Markopoulos, Professor at TU/e and Adjunct Professor at the faculty of Design Architecture and Building (DAB) at UTS. Gail is the first Visiting Fellow, as part of the Key Technology Partnership (KTP), to visit TU/e from UTS.

She has been awarded a funded Design United Research Fellowship at the User Centered Engineering (UCE) Group in the Department of Industrial Design Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Netherlands. As part of the Visiting Fellowship Gail will engage in cross-faculty collaborative research between FASS and DAB at UTS and UCE at TU/e. Her visit will involve a small research project and investigate research and funding opportunities for ongoing collaborative work between UTS and TU/e.

As a member of the Materialising Memories research program, led by Associate Professor Elise van den Hoven and jointly located at UTS and TU/e, Gail will build on existing collaborative research with Associate Professor Roger Dunston, FASS and Dr Cathy Treadaway, Centre for Applied Research of Inclusive Art and Design (CARIAD), Cardiff Metropolitan University Cardiff Met), Wales, in relation to creative approaches to healthy ageing and living with dementia.

For further information on Gail’s work, see also handsproject.info.

 

Image conscious – Interview in SMH

Publications

Gracing the front page of the Brink section of the Sydney Morning Herald this month is a feature on the work of Elise and some of her recent projects. Brink is a monthly section included with the Sydney Morning Herald with content from UTS research efforts. The article, titled ‘Image conscious,’ follows from an interview by Fiona McGill with Elise van den Hoven. It talks about the perils of capturing many items, the consequences for remembering, as well as the role of forgetting, all within the context of Elise’s research.

“A lot of people assume that human memory is just the same as computer memory, where everything is just stored the way it was … but that’s not what our human memory was designed for. It changes in the context, it changes in the situation, and it changes because your image of yourself changes, your identity changes. As you mature, you bring a different perspective to events.”

Read the full article over at the Sydney Morning Herald, or a have a look at the printed version (PDF file). The Brink section can also be picked up around UTS campus, even though we grabbed a few for our archives 😉

Talks and symposium next month

Presentations

In September 2014 we shall host several visitors to our lab and all four PhD candidates on the project will do their year one Doctoral Assessments. This is a great opportunity to have our guest give a talk about their interaction design research, so over the course of the month there will be four talks:

  • September 2: Talk by prof.dr.ir. Berry Eggen.
  • September 9: Talk by David Blezinger, MSc.
  • September 16: Talk by dr. Wendy Moncur.
  • September 26: Mini-symposium with Doctoral Assessments for all four PhD candidates, followed by a talk by dr. Corina Sas.

See the event page for all details and times. In due time, that page will include a brief introduction for all the presentations. You’re welcome to join us!

Design, memories, and tension

Blog Doménique

A year ago I started my PhD project, and in some ways you do not know how deep the rabbit hole goes. During the year the ideas about design and memories have changed. Lately, one of the things circulating in my mind is the idea of designing for reminiscing, or in other words feeling good about yourself because of pleasant feelings about the past. It’s the foundation of our project really and, of course, there are psychology studies to back up the idea that thinking about the past can indeed help us today.

Despite those studies, showing highlights from the past isn’t like nibbling on a magic mushroom of happiness. It is not a straightforward relationship. Showing me a photo of a trip I took half a year ago does not suddenly make me happier, even though that trip may be regarded as a nice thing. Why would it make me happy? It is not very relevant to my current situation, although it may remind me to go on a trip again soon. Perhaps it’s too close to me still, and I don’t need nor have use for the reconfirmation of the experience. It still reflects me as I was half a year ago, by and large the same person with the same outlook on life. So if a photographic display of myself doesn’t get me to think of myself, what will?

“You’re thinking about something my dear, and that makes you forget to talk.”

Well, perhaps an explanation is that there is no conflict nor discrepancy nor uncovering of long forgotten viewpoints. Anyone who is a good writer or storyteller knows to get us interested is a source of conflict. Whether the conflict is some unknown dangling in the future (a story arc that doesn’t get resolved until the last moment), or a sudden twist (as with jokes), you’ll want to play with anticipation of the viewer. When designing for an audience who already know their own story, introducing anticipation is a challenge. The designed thing may need to know something that the viewer does not and aim for a time-strung release of tension.

How do we create tension in a design, especially when it concerns our own memories? It seems we already know the story! What a silly suggestion! Perhaps it will only work if we have forgotten some parts of our story first, or an unknown connection is made to reveal an unconsidered angle. Alice knew about rabbits, mice, and cats, and it was only when she forcibly considered a new angle that she did realise their world was vastly different.

Immersive storytelling, missed connections, and being present in everyday life to support serendipitous encounters with nibbles of happiness – it is quite a challenge. Will our designs be like a queen of hearts, or nothing but a mad hatter? To find out, we must follow the white rabbit…

Memories of Cockatoo Island

Blog Annemarie

panorama photo MM blog
Last week the annual ‘design thinking’ camp for first-year design students at UTS took place on Cockatoo Island (a former convict area, later shipyard, and now tourist destination in the midst of Sydney Harbour). Besides our PhD research, ‘Materialising Memories’ team member Doménique and I work as a tutor in this interdisciplinary course. Around 500 students participated from various design disciplines, such as fashion, interior design, animation, integrated product design and visual communication. Elise (project leader Materialising Memories) was also involved as a lecturer in the ‘design thinking’ course and as a support staff member during the three-day camp.

The students worked in multidisciplinary teams and had to explore and map the island, and on the last day, some teams presented amazing results. Each team created three maps of self-chosen themes from very basic material, like pieces of carton, fabric, or wood in a very short period of time.

One of my favourites was a work made by a student group who wanted to map personal memories of Cockatoo Island. From the outside it showed an abstract representation of the island. The contours of the major buildings and objects on the island where nicely depicted by embroidered lines on the fabric. But that was not the interesting part. The map could be divided in small boxes, like a puzzle. The group had been asking rangers, tutors, students and other visitors on the island what would serve as a memory cue for them to remember their experience on Cockatoo Island. The students had created these memory cues and put them in the boxes.

photo memory box3Work created by Rekha, Jackie, Georgia, Sugih and Sylvia, Design Camp 2014

While presenting their work to their fellow students and me on the final day, one of the boxes was melting in the sun. It was the chocolate that served as a memory cue for their own experience of Cockatoo Island, relating to their most prominent food while working with each other on the three maps. From my own experience, chocolate seems to be a very unreliable cue as it often disappears all of a sudden. 😉

photo memory boxAnd my own memories of Cockatoo Island? I want to remember the enthusiasm of the students and their willingness to learn from each other; the lovely and inspiring conversations I had with other tutors and staff members; the long and very tasty dinner which was prepared by the head of school for the staff and tutors involved; the instruction told by fellow tutor Clare on how to fold the Sydney Opera House out of a serviette; and the walk with A/prof Bert Bongers and his projections of traces from the past on the Cockatoo Island buildings. I did no mapping myself during the camp, so I better write about my experiences.