Exploring Reminiscence in Multimodal Digital Spaces

Oral storytelling is an ancient practice vital to our collective and individual well-being and a primary form of reminiscence. Modern reminiscence is often mediated by memory prompts, especially family or personal pictures. New technologies, like social networking sites, have brought picture access and interactions to a scale and scope not possible in analog settings. However, familiar activities like in-person reminiscence are being overlooked digitally for these novel options. Because of this, there is less space for casual, small-scale sharing of narrative from pictures, especially for families and across different generations. In my thesis, I reveal new understandings of digital picture interactions that outline current social and technical factors that are limiting reminiscence. I present alternatives to current digital norms that actively encourage social narrative experiences. This is supported by human-centred research that amplifies the voices of families.I further explore the novel opportunities offered by digital spaces that have the potential to expand on what is currently possible with reminiscence. I demonstrate the need for multimodal narrative experiences in order for reminiscence to be fully included in digital spaces. I present methods of supporting casual speech showing that these multimodal interactions are feasible now and necessary to experiences of reminiscence. The majority of pictures are now only available in digital settings. As the primary form of memory prompt, digital pictures must be accompanied by digital reminiscence. Access to these narrative activities fosters families’ social connections. I show how to support digitally-mediated narrative experiences based in detailed understandings of current social and technical factors and in the broad potential offered by the digital setting.

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Axtell, R Benett

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Munteanu, Cosmin

• Domestic Technology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Reminiscence

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/129739

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/129739