The Personal Audio Loop: Designing a Ubiquitous Audio-Based Memory Aid (original) (raw)

An Audio-Based Personal Memory Aid

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

We are developing a wearable device that attempts to alleviate some everyday memory problems. The "memory prosthesis" records audio and contextual information from conversations and provides a suite of retrieval tools (on both the wearable and a personal computer) to help users access forgotten memories in a timely fashion. This paper describes the wearable device, the personal-computer-based retrieval tool, and their supporting technologies. Anecdotal observations based on real-world use and quantitative results based on a controlled memory-retrieval task are reported. Finally, some social, legal, and design challenges of ubiquitous recording and remembering via a personal audio archive are discussed.

Next-Generation Personal Memory Aids

BT Technology Journal, 2004

Personal memory assistance is a natural application of ubiquitous computing. Portable computers are decreasing in size, increasing in capability, and the barriers constraining earlier computer-based memory aids are rapidly diminishing. With each engineering advance, a new generation of 'personal memory aids' is enabled. This paper presents iRemember, our prototype wearable 'memory prosthesis'. It allows the wearer to capture and accrue daily experiences (primarily audio) and attempts to remedy a limited set of common memory problems by providing tools to find memory triggers within such collections. This is an early step in an area ripe for growth and controversy. The social and legal implications of ubiquitous recording are discussed and additional memory aids designed to address other memory problems are proposed. I get mad at myself when I'm sitting there trying to write, and I want to recall a specific statement, a specific fact, a name, and it doesn't come immediately. I hate to research something that ought to be right there at the press of a little button in my mental computer.

Designing a reminiscence aid in personal soundscape

Proceedings of IASDR 2013, 2013

Auditory perception can evoke strong emotions; emotions can enhance memory processing. We believe there should be a preferred state that differentiates reminiscence aids from the total recollection of utility-based memory aids, where human experience is enriched and thicken. In this research, we bring back auditory experience, a gradually marginalized perception, into the core of the interaction design of personal reminiscence. With an epistemological stance of research through design, we aim at gaining the knowledge of enrolling and utilizing auditory association as a design resource in everyday practice of reminiscence. We provide a design example of reminiscence aids and suggest an intervention with self-associative artifacts, which locate in a place between totally random and deterministic design. The findings from a field study show that our digital artifact participates in users’ meaning-making processes in their daily practices of reminiscence and keeps personal mementos being value-laden.

Soundcapsule: the Study of Reminiscence Triggered By Utilizing Sound Media and Technology

2020

With dramatically increasing amount of digital recordings, it becomes impossible to revisit all digital data that were ever significant in our life. However, a time capsule is often used as a historic cache or a method to communicate with future people. We argue that successfully forming digital material into a time capsule needs to understand both whether its content tends to be forgotten easily and whether its future evocation is significant. Our aim is to explore appropriate digital material to facilitate serendipitous reminiscence over time and space. We performed three pre-studies to support our design, SoundCapsule, a mobile phone application. Ten participants were invited to experience receiving random calls from their own recordings three months ago in their daily life. Qualitative research results indicate that most participants express positive surprise when receiving a SoundCapsule. This paper demonstrates how technology-mediated sound is formed to trigger everyday remini...

Lifelogging: Archival and retrieval of continuously recorded audio using wearable devices

We propose a complete system for lifelogging where audio is continuously recorded using a smartphone or a wearable recorder. Recorded audio includes speech, music and environmental sounds. First, we describe a feature-based segmentation algorithm for breaking down a long piece of audio into smaller clips. In order to archive clips into a large database, we present methods for automatically indexing and annotating audio with relevant acoustic and semantic tags. Retrieval is performed using a Query-By-Example based approach. To support our claims, the results are demonstrated via a smartphone application on the popular Android platform. Finally, we also propose a novel virtualization-based design framework to rapidly develop and test such systems for signal processing.

Music to Remember Me By: Technologies of Memory in Home Recording

Symbolic Interaction, 2010

This article presents ethnographic data on home music recording to advance the concept of technologies of memory as way for interactionists to understand memory work as a practice of self. John Dewey's classic ruminations on memory as process are combined with Tia DeNora's contemporary articulation of music as a technology of the self to explain data on home recording as individually and socially meaningful mnemonic work. This specific case study demonstrates how home recordists use material technologies (technics) and technological practices (techniques) to form and reform the self in everyday life. More generally, this article demonstrates the efficacy of interpretive studies of memory, creativity, technology, and the self in everyday life.

Navigating persistent audio

CHI'06 extended abstracts on Human factors in …, 2006

This paper gives an overview of RadioActive, a largescale asynchronous audio messaging platform for mobile devices. It supports persistent chat spaces that allow users to engage in discussion on demand. Our goal is to allow users to easily navigate and participate in large audio-based discussions with minimal cognitive overhead. RadioActive attempts to eliminate problems that habitually plague audio-only designs by using a novel combined visual and audio interface.

Forget-Me-Not: Intimate Computing In Support of Human Memory

Proceedings of FRIEND21, 1994

At RXRC we have been trying to understand how anticipated developments in mobile computing will impact our customers in the 21st century. One opportunity we can see is to improve computer-based support for human memory — ironically a problem in office systems ...

Memory karaoke: using a location-aware mobile reminiscence tool to support aging in place

2007

Abstract Episodic memory exercises such as reminiscing and storytelling have been shown to provide therapeutic benefits for older adults by prolonging their ability to lead an independent lifestyle. In this paper, we describe a mobile reminiscence tool called Memory Karaoke, which facilitates episodic memory exercise through contextualized storytelling of meaningful experiences by using contextual cues such as location, time, and photos.