A workbook for Chance Memories
This book introduces a new approach in offering designed support for personal memories by looking at how people access their memories. The work identifies a valuable but very challenging aspect, involuntary memory, which is largely unsupported. The book presents design proposals that establish approaches for populating this space, showing how chance memories can be supported and enhanced through design.
The proposals are presented as groups, mapping the spaces identified during design ethnography studies. The areas illustrate themes around unexpected remembering intended as inspiration for further exploration, and while they are not intended to prescribe specific memory recall events, they do begin to offer spaces for people to imagine and re-create their past.
The book offers creative approaches for dealing with involuntary memory and new ways of designing for personal memories as a result. These go beyond current systems for supporting memory to suggest new directions that designers might explore to support chance memories in the future.
Designs for chance memories have the potential to offer enhanced experiences of our memories and new spaces for imagining. Done sympathetically, these unexpected glimpses into our past might be received like gifts; momentarily taking us by surprise, but positively welcomed, emotionally powerful and important for personal reminiscing and well-being.