The design of a recollection supporting device : a study into triggering personal recollections

The work in this paper is carried out in the context of the design of a device which supports recollecting personal memories. This device aims to help people recollect or reminisce about their life, together or alone, at home. From the (autobiographical) memory literature we concluded that we needed to fill the device’s database with triggers instead of the memories themselves. For building this device we were interested in the following question ‘what are the most efficient triggers for recollecting‘. We carried out a field-study with media-types as triggers, that could be incorporated in such a device: photos, videos, sounds, smells and physical objects. One of the conclusions from this study is that certain types of triggers in fact reduce the number of memories people write down during recall. Therefore more research on recollection triggers is needed before the design phase of a device which supports recollecting can be finished.