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Ubiquitous sensing will soon allow us to record any moment of our lives. These moments can be restored and used to create radically new ways of aiding human memory. The goal with memory aids is: recalling what matters. This implies retrieving relevant information at the right time to the right extent and in a context-driven way. We are looking for visions and research projects that aim to re-think and re-define the notion of memory augmentation. The goal is to combine technological innovations in ubiquitous computing with basic research questions in memory psychology, thereby elevating memory augmentation technologies from a clinical niche application to a mainstream technology and initiating a major change in the way we use technology to remember and to externalize memory. This workshop will bring together researchers, designers and practitioners at the intersection of technology and cognitive psychology to discuss elements and viewpoints of forms of e-memory and new forms of memory aids.
Workshop on Ubiquitous Technologies for Augmenting the Human Mind
Ubiquitous sensing will soon allow us to record any moment of our lives. These moments can be restored and used to create radically new ways of aiding human memory. The goal with memory aids is: recalling what matters. This implies retrieving relevant information at the right time to the right extent and in a context- driven way. We are looking for visions and research projects that aim to re-think and re-define the notion of memory augmentation. The goal is to combine technological innovations in ubiquitous computing with basic research questions in memory psychology, thereby elevating memory augmentation technologies from a clinical niche application to a mainstream technology and initiating a major change in the way we use technology to remember and to externalize memory.
Recall your Actions! Using Wearable Activity Recognition to Augment the Human Mind
In this position paper we will focus on wearable activity recognitions tools in regard to their function of detecting human activities and thus enabling the user to recall everyday experience in a new way. The capabilities of activity recognition to detect, store and present activities to the person who has performed it can not only help to recall the activities but also encourage the user to remember experiences related to the activities. In order to demonstrate this, we present two projects (cases) in which wearable activity recognition is used to support the users’ recall capabilities. In the next step, we present a narrative theory of action and mind, which focuses on how humans retrospectively interpret and structure personal experience in their minds, their so called autobiographical memory. Finally, we present some further concepts and distinctions about what it means to memorize and recall personal data.
My good old Kodak: Understanding the impact of having only 24 pictures to take
Today’s abundance of cheap digital storage in the form of tiny memory cards put literally no bounds on the number of images one can capture with one’s digital camera or camera phone during an event. However, studies have shown that taking many pictures may actually make us remember less of a particular event. In this position paper, we propose to re-introduce the paradigm of old film camera in the context of modern smartphones. The purpose is to investigate how users will behave when a significant capture limitation is imposed in a picture-taking context, and in what kind of pictures this will result. Ultimately, we are interested in the effect on memory recall of such a limitation, and describe a potential study setup that will help us explore this question.
Recording Events Interactions and Annotations to Communicate Reasoning in Medical Situations
In recent years data collection and communication has become increasingly ubiquitous, to the extent where it is possible to capture and communicate many parts of live experiences. In a novel approach, we propose recording of events, interaction, and annotations in order to access characteristics that communicate the reasoning behind the decision-making of care providers. Recording is done with free-form and implicit data collection, and communication of spatio- chronological characteristics of events, interactions, and annotations are done with augmented interfaces. This enables care providers, who make decisions, to identify what factors have played the most significant role in the decision-making. In the context of chronic care, this research is aiming at, better understanding how to capture and communicate the medical decision- making process. Our preliminary experiments show success in communicating the reasoning processes of the document analysis sessions in a lab environment. We have started to look at how this improves reliability and practice outcomes of the decision-making in real- life medical environment.
Augmenting the Home to Remember - Initial User Perceptions
In today’s world, there are increasingly many things to remember. Often the information is linked to physical world objects – for instance usage instructions, personal histories, access codes or expiring guarantee dates. Mobile augmented reality (MAR) can provide a design approach, where we can utilize our everyday surroundings and attach information to the items without seemingly modifying their outlook. In this paper, we explore selected MAR scenarios from the augmented human memory point of view. We evaluated these scenarios in a online survey with 19 participants.
Exploring the role of Prospective Memory in Location-Based Reminder
Ubiquitous technology has prompted the use of location-based reminders (LBRs) to help people remember to do things while being away from their desks. However LBRs are still not an effective tool for mobile users. Our work explores how to make LBRs better by using theories of memory, in particular prospective memory, and treating the system that captures the LBRs as an external memory aid. With the knowledge from these two pre-existing literature (prospective memory and external memory aids), we set out to explore how to influence the design and the use of LBRs. In this paper, we propose a framework that uses knowledge and principles from cognitive psychology and present how we might be able to improve LBRs. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate human memory recall for prospective tasks.
Wearable Digitization of Life Science Experiments
Experimental work in Life Sciences is done with protective garment to contain harmful agents and to avoid contaminations. This limits the amount of documentation that can be done during experimentation, since pen’n’paper and other equipment is hardly allowed in those environments. Relying on her memory, the scientist has to reconstruct the important details of her experiment later on. Wearable computers, like Google Glass or wrist-worn Smartwatches, can enhance the scientist’s ability to record key information while conducting his experiment. Especially the possibility of hands-free, and implicit interaction with the wearable system creates new possibilities for augmenting the scientist’s memory.
Position Paper: Déjà vu - Technologies that make new Situations look Familiar
In this position paper we outline a technology concept for making new situations and encounters more familiar and less threatening. Going to new places, interacting with new people and carrying out new tasks is part of everyday life. New situations create a sense of excitement but in many cases also anxiety based on a fear of the unknown. Our concept uses the metaphor of a pin board as peripheral display to automatically provide advance information about potential future experiences. By providing references to and information about future events and situations we aim at creating a “feeling of having already experienced the present situation” (term Déjà vu as defined in the Oxford Dictionary) once people are in a new situation. This draws on the positive definition of the concept of déjà vu. In this paper we outline our idea and use scenarios illustrate its potential. We assess different ways the concept can be realized and chart potential technology for content creation and for presentation. We also present a discussion of the impact on human memory and how this changes experiences.
Lifelogging for "Observer" View Memories: An Infrastructure Approach
Lifelogging has much to offer human memory. Traditional lifelogging techniques use wearable cameras to capture a first-person or ‘field’ view. We propose an alternative or complementary approach in which fixed infrastructure cameras provide a third-person or ‘observer’ view of daily events. In this paper we identify key advantages and challenges for a fixed infrastructure approach to lifelogging.
Position Paper: Brain Teasers - Toward Wearable Computing that Engages Our Mind
The emerging field of cognitive activity recognition – real life tracking of mental states – can give us new possibilities to enhance our minds. In this paper, we outline the use of wearable computing to engage the user’s mind. We argue that the more personal technology becomes the more it should also adopt to the user’s long term goals improving mental fitness. We present a the concept of computing to engage our minds, discuss some enabling technologies as well as challenges and opportunities.
The human memory is an incredibly vast storage space capable of holding a lifetime worth of information. As people go about their lives memories accumulate and form our base of knowledge, our character and our identity. However, as Schacter points out, human memory is fallible in many ways and hence it is important to care for the mind, just as people care for their bodies. Tools and Technologies support people with their everyday cognitive tasks, such as remembering a busy schedule or taking down notes so no information is lost. Still people struggle when it comes to remembering certain events, people and pieces of information. But what if people never had to forget anything, but had complete control over what they remembered? The goal of lifelogging is to gather all your digital and real-world experiences, everything you have ever seen, heard, read and done. Recent developments in capture technology and information retrieval allow for continuous and automated recordings of many aspects of our everyday lives. To harness these trends and develop new paradigms for memory augmentation technologies, it is crucial to look at feasibility, human cognition, user acceptance and benefits to society. In order to build such memory augmenting system, all aspects of biological memory need to be taken into account: procedural memory (i.e. muscle memory and memory for physical skills), semantic memory (i.e. meanings, definitions, concepts), as well as episodic memory (i.e. autobiographical memory that encodes experiences from the past).
A recent movement towards a quantified self has produced a number of consumer products, such as unobtrusive cameras, microphones, location trackers, but also biometrical sensors measuring heart rate and blood oxygen levels. This data helps being proactive about ones health and habits, but furthermore awareness may lead to behavior change. A holistic quantified self however, should include the mind as well: What we have read, seen, experienced or felt. Technology has always had a direct impact on how and what humans remember. This impact is both inevitable and fundamental technology radically changes the nature and scale of the cues that we can preserve outside our own memory in order to trigger recall. Such change is not new we have seen the transition from story-telling to written books, from paintings to photographs to digital images and from individual diaries to collective social networks.
Vannevar Bushs Memex vision has become partly reality through the advent of the Internet. With lifelogging data combined with context-driven memory aids, his vision is further put into reality. People have their entire set of experiences and knowledge at their fingertips. However, simply having all this information at ones disposal is far from being enough. In order to make this information applicable, pieces of information need to surface in the right amount at the right time. Smart memory aids can sift through this vast amount of information and retrieve and present information at the right time tailored to the users current context. Hence, in this workshop we are looking at technologies that help make sense of life log data and proactively put it into applications to support people in their everyday lives. This includes sensor technologies making sense of peoples environment, intelligent algorithms to sift through this kind of data and different modalities and ways of presenting information on the output side. These developments also have social, economical and ethical implications, which need to be taken seriously. Relevant research in the field contributes to our fundamental understanding of human memory and has a transformational impact on all aspects of life the workplace, family life, health and education by measurably improving the acquisition of new knowledge, the retention of existing knowledge, and the loss of unwanted knowledge. In recent years three separate strands of technology have developed to the extent that collectively they open up entirely new ways of augmenting human memory:
To approach the challenges of augmenting the human mind, we will focus on the following themes, depending on participant contributions.
The goal of the WAHM 2014 workshop is to formulate visions and develop a research agenda for the technologies that nurture the augmentation of the human mind. The above-mentioned themes will be used as a starting point for the discussion and group analysis (described below). However, we will also pay attention to new themes possibly emerging from morning presentation and discussions.
Tilman Dingler is a researcher at the Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems at University of Stuttgart. He focusses on concepts and applications in the field of Pervasive Computing, thereby developing embedded devices and software for context-aware systems that put users and their context at the center. Tilman holds a Diploma in Media Computer Science from the University of Munich, a Master’s degree in Web Science from the University of San Francisco and an Honors degree in Technology Management from the Center for Digital Technology and Management in Munich. Before starting his PhD, Tilman was developing software for TinyCo and Yahoo!.
Kai Kunze works as an assistant professor at the Intelligent Media Processing Group, Osaka Prefecture University, directed by Prof. Koichi Kise. He received a Summa Cum Laude for his phD thesis, University Passau. He was visting researcher at the MIT Media Lab. His work experience includes internships at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Sunlabs Europe and the Research Department of the German Stock Exchange. His major research contributions are in pervasive computing, especially in sensing, phyisical and cognitive activity recognition. Recently, he focuses on tracking knowledge acquisition activities, especially reading.
Nigel Davies is a Professor in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. His research focuses on experimental mobile and ubiquitous systems and his projects include the MOST, GUIDE, e-Campus and PD-NET projects that have been widely reported on in the academic literature and the popular press. Professor Davies has held visiting positions at SICS, Sony’s Distributed Systems Lab in San Jose, the Bonn Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, CMU and Google Research in Mountain View, CA. Nigel is active in the research community and has co-chaired both Ubicomp and MobiSys conferences and was an editor-in-chief of IEEE Pervasive Magazine. He is the chair of the steering committee for HotMobile and one of the founders of the ACM PerDis Symposium on Pervasive Displays.
Albrecht Schmidt is a professor for Human Computer Interaction at the University of Stuttgart. He studied in Ulm, Manchester, and Lancaster, where he received his PhD. His research interest is in human computer interaction beyond the desktop, including UIs for mobile devices and cars. Understanding the impact of contextual factors on the user experience and on the systems design is driving his work. He is co-founder of the ACM conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI). He is on the editorial board of the IEEE Computer Magazine.
Marc Langheinrich is an Associate Professor at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland, where he works on privacy and usability in pervasive computing systems. Marc has served as General Co-Chair for PerCom 2012 and UbiComp 2010, and most recentrly as Program Co-Chair for UbiComp 2013. He is on the editorial board of Elsevier’s Personal and Mobile Communications, IEEE Pervasive, and Dagstuhl’s Open Access Series in Informatics. Marc holds a PhD from ETH Zurich.
Niels Henze is assistant professor at the University of Stuttgart (Germany). He received awards from different conferences including CHI and MobileHCI. He is interested in large-scale studies using mobile application stores as a research tool, interlinking physical objects and digital information, and multimodal interfaces. Niels developed and supervised the development of a number of mobile applications and games to conduct large-scale user studies. His apps and games have been installed more than a million times.