I believe that human memory requires more external assistance nowadays, not only to create memory cues but to confirm information that has been retrieved as well. External assistance could be someone who attends the same event (eye witness) or any other of the memory aids mentioned in the previous chapter. Another example is about remembering food. I believe that people could remember their lunch for amaximum of three days previously but no more than that. I asked participants to go back three days in the timeline of their collected data and tell me about their lunch,such as who they had lunch with and what conversation they had, without using any memory assistance. I found that participants found this very difficult and it was difficult for them to remember details or to confirm some information that they tried to recall. On the other hand, all of them became more excited and confident when I asked them to use the lifelogging prototype as a tool to answer the memory questions.
I found that participants often tend to locate the photos of the event first and then they combine data that they captured during that period of time to talk and describe their events and past actions. In addition, participants often combine screen images, phone calls, or SMS to the photos each time they attempt to talk about any of them. In other words, I found that photos were the main basis for their search strategies.
5.4.5 Summary
In this study I illustrated that there are several types of data that people can collect and use for the purpose of triggering, augmenting and supporting their memory of past experiences. I found that photos were the most supportive and other valuable data could be integrated to increase the powerful supportive nature of the photos and to stimulate different types of memory for retrieving information. In addition, new methods of assessing lifelogging, the captured data and the prototype were introduced. All of this together increased my understanding of how lifelogging could assist people in remembering their past life experiences. I found that lifelogging through collected data works very well in augmenting and supporting people to remember past events and actions. In addition, I found that exploring lifelogging data in a timeline not only supports people to remember their past experiences but also enables them to tell stories about specific events when they see all of their captured data at the same time. On the other hand, the existence of some blurry and dark photos did not mean anything to the users nor could they add any new information to the activity itself. In addition, the
Chapter 5 – First Prototype 114 collected photos occasionally did not tell anything about the main activity itself as a result of pointing the camera in another direction or something covered the lens. Furthermore, capturing vast amounts of photos in a small closed place, such as the home or office, can confuse the users into recalling specific moments that at the time the photo was took do not make any sense. To avoid such problems I am going to look to capturing new metadata to enhance and support my collected data.
Chapter 6 – Second Prototype 115
Chapter 6
IsstLog: A Movement Augmented User Interface for Browsing
Heterogeneous Lifelogging Data
6.1 Introduction
With the first prototype, I found that capturing data and metadata is the easiest part of lifelogging technology and also it is the fundamental cornerstone of its process.In addition, I agreed and proved that raw data has a great ability to stimulate and trigger human memory, not only to recall past experiences but also to relive them. On the other hand, I observed that available data is sometimes powerless and users need extra information to confirm and to add more details about an incident or an event, and that sometimes they could not distinguish between, recognise, or remember numerous indoor actions and activities as a result of similarity between photos, or photos whose content was difficult to make out, such as ones that were dark or blurry. Furthermore, seeing the same photos of one place without extra information could be confusing to the people viewing them.
The first study, a face-to-face observation, allowed me to monitor, find, and understand the critical points of the prototype itself. For example, I tracked the steps that the participants followed to create their cues, the time they took to obtain that information and the number of movements that users made on the interface to achieve their goal. All of these observations motivated me to search and think about capturing extra interactive data that is able to provide more insight into experiences and is valuable to users when making associations between information and for stimulating their memory. I believe that logging past actions and events could support people not only in remembering their past life experience, but also in reliving events that are never captured by any other devices. Such data could also allow me to investigate novel ways to develop the previous prototype, to investigate the influence of using selected photos as landmarks for lifelogging users to directly locate moments that could help them remember episodes from their lifespan, and to examine the way such data and metadata reflects upon a lifelogger’s past, present, and future life.
Chapter 6 – Second Prototype 116 In this chapter, I discuss the process of redesigning and rebuilding the first prototype to establish an appropriate and suitable user interface that permits searching and interactive browsing and is capable of stimulating the memory and visually displaying past life experience in multimedia forms, and that would encourage users to respond and react to that data and utilise it as landmarks to gain further detailed information about their past life experience. During the redesign process, I also searched and looked more deeply for extra interactive data that people could use for activity recognition. To do this I focused on both lifelogging branches: passive capture and information retrieval process. For the former, I sought to be aware of what additional data and metadata to capture and how I should capture it. For the latter, I needed to think of how I could make that data and metadata visual, simple, and integrated to motivate users to create their visual cues and trigger their memory to relive their desired past experience.
I present IsstLog, a new approach to capturing and presenting large, diverse lifelogging data sets. IsstLog uses wireless accelerometers alongside other more typical lifelogging sensors to capture users’ actions and activities. The user intreface of IsstLog allows the log data to be searched based on the physical activity taking place. IsstLog is a system that gathers lifelogging data and presents a novel interface for its retrieval. The system captures data about everyday life from multiple heterogeneous sensors, including accelerometers worn on the arms and body and placed on various objects in the environment. It also captures and processes data generated by the electricity meter. The user interface allows for the display and searching of the lifelogging data and the creation of visual cues and bookmarks to support users’ recollection of past events.